"We're Fucked"

5.3.10

4:35 pm

Despite the meat fist weather outside and the retard who can't set off a decent car bomb, I was able to watch "Alien Plural" and "Alien Cubed" this weekend.

These are some good ass movies*.

Alien Plural was done by Terminator's James Cameron.

I say Terminator's rather than Avatar's or some other James Cameron movie because Aliens could have taken place n the universe of Terminator.

Like, after all the machines are taken care of and humanity has remade itself and all that, like five hundred years after Terminator.

The ships look VERY much the same.

And Kyle Reese is in Aliens.

But, even though the movie could be called Terminator: Aliens, it looks great.

Very Camerony, but in a good way.

In this one, Ripley gets found floating in space in her escape pod 57 years after the events of Alien.

She gets brought down to Earth by The Company and gets brought to trial for self destructing the last ship.

She is introduced to Company Man, Paul Reiser.

I thought it was a weird choice casting him but that was because I'd seen Mad About You before I'd seen Aliens.

But it's a great casting job and Reiser does is very well, even if he sticks out a bit.

Long story short, Ripley has to go back to the Alien infested planet but this time with a bunch of Space Marines.

They are stereotypical, always screaming about "hunting bugs" and "being ultimate bad asses" and all that, but they're done well and it's funny.

AND, I forgot that a very young Bill Paxton plays the "crazy, trigger happy redneck" Marine.

He's always screaming about kicking ass and blah blah blah.
AND, and this was a real treat, I discovered that the oft-quoted "Game over, maan! Game over!!" is FROM Aliens!

Bill Paxton says it when the crew of twelve hardcore Space Marines gets reduced to four in about three minutes.

They get their genitals handed to them but an entire colony of aliens, hundreds of them and then find a little girl, Newt, who is adorable and does the I'm-sad-because-I-saw-my-entire-colony-reduced-to-alien-vaginas-or-chum look really well and your heart breaks for her.

Very solid child actor, very not actory.

Around the time that things are getting rull bad, Kyle Reese teaches Ripley how to be a bad ass.

Then, everyone is about to escape when Newt falls down a hole and into a Bad Place...the Egg Chamber.

There we see the Queen for the first time.

It's never really been a contest, but if it had been, this movie would have decided it for me.

Practical effects are better than computer.

Obvious, I know, but, man, do these things look great, and the Queen?

Exquisite.

So Ripley rescues the kid and they're about to get away when...uh oh!!!

Queen is not dead, she has figured out how to use an elevator and, next thing you know, she's followed them onto the spaceship orbiting the planet which just went nuclear.

She reintroduces herself by impaling the awesome Good Android, Bishop and then, literally, tearing him in half.

Bong.

Then Ripley and the Queen have a fucking punch up, Ripley sporting this cool loader/mech suit.

Things get messy and, again, the alien get sucked out the airlock into space, this time not being incinerated by the thrusters and just floating off, most likely angry at the turn of events.

Everyone goes into cryo-sleep, Newt, Ripley and the damaged Hicks AKA Kyle Reese.

Excellent follow up to the first, felt like a definite sequel with real evolution and escalation of the problem.

Nothing really ridiculous.

Like, even Ripley duct taping a pulse rifle to a flame thrower wasn't too "Rambo tooling up".

It was just an extremely intelligent use of duct tape.

Alien Cubed is a MASSIVE departure from the formula thus far, with regards to both the story and the directing style.

First big difference, there is a directing style.

No offense to Scott or Cameron, but the movies just kind of happen, there's great lighting and sets and the mood is great and the acting is very natural, but there's nothing really stylish about it.

Not like Fight Club or Zodiac or Se7en, you know?

I mention these movies because the guy who directed them, directed Alien Cubed.

And you can tell pretty much right away.

Because his name is in the credits.

But then you see the first few shots of the movie and you can reeeally tell.

In a way, the story is more than the typical, "there's an alien, no there isn't, yes there is look, oh shit we're gonna die" thing.

Ripley's pod gets sabotaged by a facehugger that was hidden on the ship by the Queen before she was flushed and it causes a crash.

Both Newt and Hicks are killed and Ripley is found washed up, covered in oil on the shore of a prison planet.

There are 25 inmates there, with a medical officer, a superintendent and a deputy type.

They're all rapists, murderers, psychos etc. and they haven't seen a woman in years.

But, the "leader" of the prisoners is Roc from that awful Middle Class Cosby Show, "Roc".

The prisoners are sort of religious and that plays a big role in the movie.

There's a great scene at the beginning where everyone is gathered around a huge furnace pit thing where Newt and Hicks are dropped in while we see a new type of alien hatch from the torso of a dead bull.

Very dark stuff.

Great juxtaposition with Roc's speech about life, death and rebirth laid over it.

This is the first time an alien has been rendered in CG and, when it isn't moving fast, it looks great, but they seemed to have had problems blending it with the scenery and that sort of takes you out of it.

Oh, and "We're fucked" refers to what Ripley says when the remaining prisoners tell her that there are no weapons except axes, yes, axes with which to take on the alien.

Great delivery made funnier by the fact that Christina said it about five seconds before she did.

In the end, they found a pretty damn cool way to deal with this thing that doesn't have ANYTHING to do with an airlock.

Looked awesome.

I had always thought that the movies started going down in quality right after the first one, but, watching them back to back like this is really showing a true evolution, especially between Plural and Cubed.

You can totally see how this got Fincher some cred and you can totally see how Cameron reused the spaceship as an HK in Terminator.

At the moment I'm still waiting for Christina to finish watching Cubed because she almost fell asleep during the last thirty minutes.

I considered hiding a small mouth in my own and occasionally smacking her on the back of the head with it to keep her alert, but I couldn't get the power source to attach to my uvula and, after giving up on an electrical power source, I tried to just blow into it to propel it but I couldn't get enough force.

Next I tried drinking boiling water to get like a steam powered thing going, but that just ruptured my stomach lining and filled it with acid and blood.

It was cool because I kind of felt like an alien, you know, with acid for blood, but the uncontrollable vomiting detracted from that quite a bit.

Do you know how painful it is to vomit boiling water, blood and stomach acid?

Then shut the fuck up, all right?

While waiting for Little Miss I-Can't-Stay-Up-Or-I'm-Only-Getting-Four-Hours-Of-Sleep to finish Cubed, I've finished the third season of Burn Notice.

I want that show to leave USA and find a real network so shit can start going DOWN.

Season three was better that two and one obviously, but things are progressing sooooo slowly.

New season starts in January.

Agg.

Also watched the very first episode of the new Doctor Who.

The new guy looks like Michael Showalter, Crispin Glover and a high school chemistry teacher.

They were selling him pretty hard to make us forget about David Tennant, but, by gawd, they did it.

The first twenty minutes are him with a little girl and it's just adorable.

And his new companion is a sizzling little Scotswoman.

Approval granted.

Lunching with Jess and Danielle this Friday to hand off Wet Goddess and get my Walking Dead and my copy of Changes.

Yay.

Doing Iron Man 1 and 2 this weekend if anyone fucking shows up.

Where oh where has my charisma gone...

Finally, Id had abut four calls where someone started AND ended the conversation with "Blessed day" (pronounced as "blessed" AND "bleh-sed") and the next time someone called, I just responded, "Awesome."

There was a pause and the conversation moved on.

I think if you're going to just throw that up at the very start of a conversation, you should be ready for anything.

I think the next one that tries it, I'll come back with "Can't not".

It reminds me of the time I was coming off the 6 at 103rd on my way to work, and this guy stepped into my path to stop me from walking.

I removed my headphones and raised my eyebrows.

He looked scared and said, "I'm sorry to stop you, but...did you know that Jesus loves you?"

I paused, shrugged and said, "Yeah, obviously."

He seemed satisfied and let me on my way, so I guess we both won that day.

I'M OUT!

* This is merely a qualitative statement, it does not refer to Sigourney Weaver's ass, which is "bony" rather than "good".