People may have praised Yozakura Quartet's animation, but I didn't like it all that much. It often felt unnatural/unnecessary. I'm not saying the rest of the show should've been poorly animated, but I like it better when great animation is used exclusively in scenes that require a lot of action (this isn't exclusive to fighting. could be a chase, dance, or whatever) or scenes that are key moments in the story. A big reason why I can't enjoy ecchi anime and prefer to read the manga instead is the scenes they obviously focus on in terms of animation. It just comes off as obnoxious.
Name:
Anonymous2014-02-18 20:50
>>3
Much of the scenes with good animation in Yozakura Quartet are action-heavy though.
Name:
Anonymous2014-02-27 4:03
Oh the thread was recreated here, thankfully. I hope the non-autists will check here.
Name:
Anonymous2014-02-27 5:18
Potential sakuga anime for spring 2014:
Ping Pong
Captain Earth
Mahouka
Anything else?
Name:
Anonymous2014-02-27 10:45
>>6
Hitsugi no Chaika
Mushishi
Break Blade
Tamako Love Story
Name:
Anonymous2014-02-27 18:11
I really liked Aiura's animation. Even though it looked dull and dim it had something very comfy to it.
But the autists are already here (not me). Ask the german retards from aniPodium how long they follow each step of mine already, unsuccessful though
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:25
Och, habt ihr mich gebannt, ihr Süßen. Wieviele waren dafür nötig, das ganze Forum?
So ein Pech aber auch, dass ich wie immer dennoch am Ende als Sieger dastehe und ihr absolut nichts gegen mich ausrichten könnt. Immer erst denken, dann handeln, ihr Vollidioten
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:29
From the other thread, the Alien review from Roger. Essential for every Sabuga fag
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:30
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:31
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:31
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:31
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:32
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:32
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:32
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:33
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:33
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:34
At its most fundamental level, "Alien" is a movie about things that can jump out of the dark and kill you. It shares a kinship with the shark in "Jaws," Michael Myers in "Halloween," and assorted spiders, snakes, tarantulas and stalkers. Its most obvious influence is Howard Hawks' "The Thing" (1951), which was also about a team in an isolated outpost who discover a long-dormant alien, bring it inside, and are picked off one by one as it haunts the corridors. Look at that movie, and you see "Alien" in embryo.
In another way, Ridley Scott's 1979 movie is a great original. It builds on the seminal opening shot of "Star Wars" (1977), with its vast ship in lonely interstellar space, and sidesteps Lucas' space opera to tell a story in the genre of traditional "hard" science fiction; with its tough-talking crew members and their mercenary motives, the story would have found a home in John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction during its nuts-and-bolts period in the 1940s. Campbell loved stories in which engineers and scientists, not space jockeys and ray-gun blasters, dealt with outer space in logical ways.
Certainly the character of Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver, would have appealed to readers in the Golden Age of Science Fiction. She has little interest in the romance of finding the alien, and still less in her employer's orders that it be brought back home as a potential weapon. After she sees what it can do, her response to "Special Order 24" ("Return alien lifeform, all other priorities rescinded") is succinct: "How do we kill it?" Her implacable hatred for the alien is the common thread running through all three "Alien" sequels, which have gradually descended in quality but retained their motivating obsession.
One of the great strengths of "Alien" is its pacing. It takes its time. It waits. It allows silences (the majestic opening shots are underscored by Jerry Goldsmith with scarcely audible, far-off metallic chatterings). It suggests the enormity of the crew's discovery by building up to it with small steps: The interception of a signal (is it a warning or an SOS?). The descent to the extraterrestrial surface. The bitching by Brett and Parker, who are concerned only about collecting their shares. The masterstroke of the surface murk through which the crew members move, their helmet lights hardly penetrating the soup. The shadowy outline of the alien ship. The sight of the alien pilot, frozen in his command chair. The enormity of the discovery inside the ship ("It's full of ... leathery eggs ...").
A recent version of this story would have hurtled toward the part where the alien jumps on the crew members. Today's slasher movies, in the sci-fi genre and elsewhere, are all pay-off and no buildup. Consider the wretched remake of the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which cheats its audience out of an explanation, an introduction of the chain-saw family, and even a proper ending. It isn't the slashing that we enjoy. It's the waiting for the slashing.
Hitchcock knew this, with his famous example of a bomb under a table. (It goes off -- that's action. It doesn't go off -- that's suspense.) M. Night Shyamalan's "Signs" knew that, and hardly bothered with its aliens at all. And the best scenes in Hawks' "The Thing" involve the empty corridors of the Antarctic station where the Thing might be lurking.
"Alien" uses a tricky device to keep the alien fresh throughout the movie: It evolves the nature and appearance of the creature, so we never know quite what it looks like or what it can do. We assume at first the eggs will produce a humanoid, because that's the form of the petrified pilot on the long-lost alien ship. But of course we don't even know if the pilot is of the same race as his cargo of leathery eggs. Maybe he also considers them as a weapon. The first time we get a good look at the alien, as it bursts from the chest of poor Kane (John Hurt). It is unmistakably phallic in shape, and the critic Tim Dirks mentions its "open, dripping vaginal mouth."
Yes, but later, as we glimpse it during a series of attacks, it no longer assumes this shape at all, but looks octopod, reptilian or arachnoid. And then it uncorks another secret; the fluid dripping from its body is a "universal solvent," and there is a sequence both frightening and delightful as it eats its way through one deck of the ship after another. As the sequels ("Aliens," "Alien 3," "Alien Resurrection") will make all too abundantly clear, the alien is capable of being just about any monster the story requires. Because it doesn't play by any rules of appearance or behavior, it becomes an amorphous menace, haunting the ship with the specter of shape-shifting evil. Ash (Ian Holm), the science officer, calls it a "perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility," and admits: "I admire its purity, its sense of survival; unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."
Sigourney Weaver, whose career would be linked for years to this strange creature, is of course the only survivor of this original crew, except for the ... cat. The producers must have hoped for a sequel, and by killing everyone except a woman, they cast their lot with a female lead for their series.
Variety noted a few years later that Weaver remained the only actress who could "open" an action movie, and it was a tribute to her versatility that she could play the hard, competent, ruthless Ripley and then double back for so many other kinds of roles. One of the reasons she works so well in the role is that she comes across as smart; the 1979 "Alien" is a much more cerebral movie than its sequels, with the characters (and the audience) genuinely engaged in curiosity about this weirdest of lifeforms.
A peculiarity of the rest of the actors is that none of them were particularly young. Tom Skerritt, the captain, was 46, Hurt was 39 but looked older, Holm was 48, Harry Dean Stanton was 53, Yaphet Kotto was 42, and only Veronica Cartwright at 29 and Weaver at 30 were in the age range of the usual thriller cast. Many recent action pictures have improbably young actors cast as key roles or sidekicks, but by skewing older, "Alien" achieves a certain texture without even making a point of it: These are not adventurers but workers, hired by a company to return 20 million tons of ore to Earth (the vast size of the ship is indicated in a deleted scene, included on the DVD, which takes nearly a minute just to show it passing).
The screenplay by Dan O'Bannon, based on a story he wrote with Ronald Shusett, allows these characters to speak in distinctive voices. Brett and Parker (Kotto and Stanton), who work in the engine room, complain about delays and worry about their cut of the profits. But listen to Ash: "I'm still collating it, actually, but I have confirmed that he's got an outer layer of protein polysaccharides. He has a funny habit of shedding his cells and replacing them with polarized silicon which gives him a prolonged resistance to adverse environmental conditions." And then there is Ripley's direct way of cutting to the bottom line.
The result is a film that absorbs us in a mission before it involves us in an adventure, and that consistently engages the alien with curiosity and logic, instead of simply firing at it. Contrast this movie with a latter-day space opera like "Armageddon," with its average shot a few seconds long and its dialogue reduced to terse statements telegraphing the plot. Much of the credit for "Alien" must go to director Ridley Scott, who had made only one major film before this, the cerebral, elegant "The Duelists" (1977). His next film would be another intelligent, visionary sci-fi epic, "Blade Runner" (1982).
Though his career has included some inexplicable clinkers ("Someone To Watch Over Me,") it has also included "Thelma & Louise," "G.I. Jane," "Gladiator" (unloved by me, but not by audiences), "Black Hawk Down" and "Matchstick Men." These are simultaneously commercial and intelligent projects, made by a director who wants to attract a large audience but doesn't care to insult it.
"Alien" has been called the most influential of modern action pictures, and so it is, although "Halloween" also belongs on the list. Unfortunately, the films it influenced studied its thrills but not its thinking. We have now descended into a bog of Gotcha! movies in which various horrible beings spring on a series of victims, usually teenagers. The ultimate extension of the genre is the Geek Movie, illustrated by the remake of "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," which essentially sets the audience the same test as an old-time carnival geek show: Now that you've paid your money, can you keep your eyes open while we disgust you? A few more ambitious and serious sci-fi films have also followed in the footsteps of "Alien," notably the well-made "Aliens" (1986) and "Dark City" (1998). But the original still vibrates with a dark and frightening intensity.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:35
At the idiots from the IRC and twitter, are you already crying? I really hope, you fucking pieces of shit
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 11:38
>>1
Kraker, is that you? Come on, tell me, how does it feel to be partly responsible for that shit with your lies and such?
And here, I thought we could be friends. Too bad
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-02 16:41
Top lel, this is some serious internet vendetta. Did you get raped by some internet community? I have never seen such serious asspain before.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-04 9:21
OMG Tyrnos, deine Tränen sind wirklich köstlich im Scarlett Thread. Tja, wenn man so blöd ist und glaubt sie sei schön...
scarjo is in the top 5 hottest women alive
Ihr idioten bringt mir wirklich immer das beste Material, ich muss mich nicht mal anstrengen. Wie schon auf aniPodium macht ihr euch selber kaputt.
Bold claims my shitposting friend. Gonna need some proof. If you're so great, you wouldn't vent your butthurt here and face those you despise. But here you are taking it out on a thread that was used by less than ten people. :^)
Cute, you have nothing to say so you resort to spam. How amusing. What's even funnier is you think I'm one of your German friends from that forum. I don't think there's anyone left here save for the two of us.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-04 9:45
>>51
The threads have always been browsed by a small community. I'm just sticking around in hopes of understanding why you are doing this childish act. There are other places to discuss animation, the loss of this thread doesn't mean much.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-05 3:02
Hey Jungs und Mädels, alles fit im Schritt? Bei mir auf jeden Fall. Wenn ich nur an gestern denke, kriege ich sofort nen Ständer, sooo gut war das gestern. Besser als Sex!
Man, bin ich gut! In der Tat würdig als Gott bezeichnet zu werden!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-05 3:04
Danke Tyrnos, dass du dich immer wieder bereit stellst, die Rolle des Deppen zu übernehmen. Bin dir dafür wirklich dankbar!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-05 3:57
>newfags
>cancer
>>/b/
So schwer sich einzugestehen, dass man schlechter in etwas ist als andere? Mein Gott, ihr stellt euch ja an wie Mädchen. Aber ganz ehrlich, ihr und eure Freunde lachen über so dämliche Witze?
>alright be cool harrison. eveythings fine. you're just gonna get yourself a slice and sit back down. man maybe it wasn't such i good idea to smoke that doob with leto and mcconaughey. I'm not a kid anymore.
>there are only 40 million people watching me right now. just act natural. do i look weird right now? i bet i look weird right now. this is worse than that time ridley slipped me that acid on the set of blade runner. hauer always gets credit for tears in rain, but you try keeping your cool when you see the millennium falcon come barreling out of your co-stars right nipple mid-scene. what the fuck is on this shit anyway? jesus ford just pick the fucking thing up. dont get lost in the details.
>alright that looked way to suspicious. we need some damage control. shit shit shit shit. oh i got it! ask for a napkin! a man blitzed out of his skull wouldnt ask for a napkin, right? who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to let a teenage boy host the oscars? the times they are a changin i guess.
>alright just sit back down. relax. its over. you nailed it bud. now you got this bitchin pizza and all these fags are none the wiser. you still got it ford.
>you still fucking got it.
Das ist Teenie-Niveau. Nur ein Beispiel
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-05 5:31
Und nicht zu vergessen: Ihr schreibt nicht wie ein Anon!
>>58
Well then, how do we get rid of our autistic German shitposter?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-05 12:12
Are you a fucking retard?
I don't know, are you?
Warum gibt es immer noch keine Antwort auf die Gegenfrage? Er hat schließlich nichts falsches gesagt, oder? Oder könnt ihr nicht antworten, weil ihr noch nie ein Buch in den Händen gehalten habt?
>>59 how do we get rid of our autistic German shitposter?
You really think there might be a way? Shows how desperate you are. Again, let me tell you that as long as you retards from aniPodium (and the german blogs) are still doing their shit, I will NEVER even think about to stop.
I really can't believe that the sakuga crowd is keep going with that bullshit and still want to protect them, although they're the reason for all that.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-05 13:48
Do people actually care about the oscars, because according to the academy awards Ben Hur, Titanic, and LOTR: The Return of the King are the greatest movies ever made
Oh Gott im Himmel. Das toppt ja sogar fast die Sache mit TDK
Hasn't been scanlated the second chapter of Stealth Synphony from the ESJ yet?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-06 18:18
Holy shit kid you need to be at least 18 to post here.
You come from reddit don't you?
Ich frag mich schon, warum ihr stets auf solch subtile Mittel greift um meine Aufmerksamkeit zu erzeugen, aber wie Idioten rüberkommt. Woran das wohl liegen mag?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-06 18:24
Ja ja, ich sehe schon, es gibt für mich einfach keinen Grund von euch zu lassen, ihr bietet einfach zu gutes Material (neben anderen Gründen)
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-06 18:26
Never forget:
TDK is a great movie
TDKR isn't a shit movie
Interstellar will be the new 2001
And Nolan is a good Director, his movies are thought-provoking!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-06 18:55
nice counter argument you fucking pleb faggot.
OMG, ernsthaft?
Seriöse Frage: Warum glaubt ihr, mich mit Schleimerei oder was auch immer kontrollieren zu können? Abgesehen davon, habe ich keine Regeln gemacht oder so
Wow, it's even worse than expected, Nazitards from aniPodium.
From left to right, top to bottom Listing all movies
Most retarded thing I've seen in a while, but not surprising coming from the guys who write something like
>alright be cool harrison. eveythings fine. you're just gonna get yourself a slice and sit back down. man maybe it wasn't such i good idea to smoke that doob with leto and mcconaughey. I'm not a kid anymore.
>there are only 40 million people watching me right now. just act natural. do i look weird right now? i bet i look weird right now. this is worse than that time ridley slipped me that acid on the set of blade runner. hauer always gets credit for tears in rain, but you try keeping your cool when you see the millennium falcon come barreling out of your co-stars right nipple mid-scene. what the fuck is on this shit anyway? jesus ford just pick the fucking thing up. dont get lost in the details.
>alright that looked way to suspicious. we need some damage control. shit shit shit shit. oh i got it! ask for a napkin! a man blitzed out of his skull wouldnt ask for a napkin, right? who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to let a teenage boy host the oscars? the times they are a changin i guess.
>alright just sit back down. relax. its over. you nailed it bud. now you got this bitchin pizza and all these fags are none the wiser. you still got it ford.
>you still fucking got it.
and laugh about it. The list also doesn't make sense, movie-wise. Best way to show how retarded newfags (and germans) are
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:27
Ich glaube, es ist an der Zeit euch richtig berühmt zu machen. Nicht wahr, Tyrnos you motherfucker?!?
Soweit ich weiß, gehst du auf die 30 zu, bist wahrscheinlich schon soweit. Ist es dir nicht peinlich so zu sprechen?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:38
Ach ja, weil es Kaito Hasegawa so sehr stört:
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:39
Newfags
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:39
newfags
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:39
NEWFAGS
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:40
NewFags
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:40
New fags
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:42
fags new
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:43
sgafwen
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:48
Anipodium nazis, that's a really bad and retarded thread that you have made:
What you think about that "joke" of yours and the result is even better:
SOMEBODY SHOOP THIS NOW. LET'S MAKE HISTORY.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-07 3:49
Also, who's EdgarAllanBro?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-08 5:03
Since we're at it, why don't we mention DarkHaseo too? His "Who want you to fuck" threads on /tv/ were a great contribution, weren't they? That smart wording, openly admitting what's always on his mind (probably the only thing) and supported by Tyrnos of course.
DarkHaseo, are you still thinking and dreaming of Women without Underwear walking around in public?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-08 5:08
In german:
*Heul* Mama! MAMA!!! *Wäääh* Warum reagiert der böse Onkel nicht so wie ich es gerne hätte und erwarten würde? *WÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄHHHHHHHH* *HEUL* *HEUL* HEUL*
Tja, das liegt ganz einfach daran, dass er eben ein funktionierendes Gehirn hat. Das unterscheidet ihn von dir und deinen Freunden. Und nun geh deine Milch austrinken, wie es sich für brave Jungen gehört.
Whoever this poster is, do they not realise they are equally as toxic and annoying as the people he seems to be 'calling out' and 'hating' - he is wasting so much time and effort getting angry in a place where the 3 people that still come here just don't really care...
>>81
Oh and DarkHaseo, you've learned some language aside from your first language a bit by now? Or are you still lying about that illness of yours? And with illness I don't mean your mental illness of course - that is true.
Was always annoying to read your posts where not one single word was written correctly, let alone whole sentences... You know, russia has also internet; or wherever you came from
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-08 12:28
derail the thread
Well, we're talking about shitposters right now
No you fucker, YOU. ARE. SHITPOSTING.
Great one, aniPodium!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-09 9:19
Hey Tyrnos, since it's sunday and I'm in a good mood, I searched and find some nice presents for you. They're about your biggest love - COWTITS!
Since I know that yu can't live without them, I took the time. Just for you! Am I not a nice boy?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-09 9:28
Man, now I feel like a true /anon/. They also visit facebook and other shitplaces to harass idiots and lowlives. Great feeling, I must say.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-09 9:38
Oh yeah, Tyrnos my hero.
I know how a real woman works
I am the coolest on the forum here!
My deepest respect.
You motherfucker!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-09 9:59
Jesus Christ. From Conny, another user from aniPodium (a female):
Matthew McConaughey is the greatest actor right now in Hollywood and so fucking good, I can't believe it
Just because he won the Oscar cause he had lost weight for a role. But you also said something similar about Christian Bale, didn't you? Also
Matthew McConaughey's acting in True Detective is the best work an actor has ever done in any TV show
EVER!!
What the Fuck.jpg.png.gif
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-09 10:04
Conny, I bet you also think Interstellar will be the new 2001, right? Of course, Nolan as director and writer and even McConaughey as the main lead cast.
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!!!!!!
IT WON'T BE THE NEW 2001, IT WILL BE BETTER THAN ALL MOVIES EVER COMBINED!!!!
EVEN BETTER AND MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE BIBLE!!!!!
IT WILL BE THE SECOND COMING OF JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You guys would eat shit straight out of an asshole.
Great post aniPodium
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 6:46
Holy fuck, Trigger is making another anime? But it's an adaption, didn't they say they will only make Original anime? Imaishi is lying again? And what's worse, it's an LN adaption... I hope, the anime will have animation this time though. No need for another Still la Still
The triggernigger are already wet as fuck though, right? Can't wait to suck Imaishi's cock again?
And regarding KLK, one guy of the sakuga core (Murad or paeses I believe) confirmed that the following GIFs are all better animated than all episodes from KLK together.
Yo Tyrnos ya mothafucka, that's not a cool thing to say, ya know? (Am I as cool as you?)
But don't worry, you're not the only one with such retarded statements on that shitplace anipodium:
Guilty Crown is great (Kaito Hasegawa)
Fate/Zzzzzzzzzz is perfect (Holyko/Eshaloti)
Conny is the best though (alone for the reason that there so many):
Steins;Gate is the most intelligent anime I've ever saw
The Dark Knight is the best movie ever
TDKR is a great movie
Nolan is the best director and writer. Ever.
Interstellar will be the new 2001
Christian Bale is a better actor than Robert De Niro
Matthew McConaughey is currently the best actor
Capeshit movies are awesome
Dexter is a great show
Arrow is a great show
Homeland is a great show
Matthew McConaughey's performane in True Detective is the best acting performance in a TV show !!EVER!!
You know, when weeaboo shit like Steins;Gate is intelligent for you, it just mean that you're plain stupid. But no surprise here, you also think Nolan movies are good or even intelligent. And you love Capeshit, Homeland and Dexter.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 6:48
Back to Reddit (anipodium user)
Explain
>made an idiot of himself
>can't admit it
>won't admit it
>maximum damage control (anipodium user)
I'm not one of the guys. Don't avoid the question and tell us, how they're from reddit?
Shit dude I'm on your side. I was saying that's why he brought up Reddit for no reason. It's always some sort of damage control. (anipodium user)
What damage control?
Don't worry about it man. ;) (anipodium user)
AWESOME. SIMPLY AWESOME.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 6:48
Implying Reddit is in any way worse than anipodium
0/10
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 6:48
And don't forget:
Ur mum shit in my mouth it was delicious ;^)
DarkHaseo, so you're also into stuff like eating shit?
FANTASTIC!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 6:49
DarkHaseo, I just remembered, you said something about a realistic drawn mermaid. Can you now tell me where you saw that real mermaid and how it does look like?
I want one for my aquarium. And I swear, I will treat it very good!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 7:00
The ride never ends!
The worst movie ever. I puked larvae and shat spaghetti after watching it.
Awesome bait anipodium (in a thread about the movie Her) coming from the guys who gave MoS and the last Star Trek great ratings
>>116
There's no anipodium here you silly goose. You don't like those anipodium guys yet you spam this thread, which is unrelated to that forum. What gives?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 10:24
your post reeks of bait because of your grammatical error
There's no reason to like guys like you and your friends. Just like I've proven in all those posts, they're braindead and have the worst taste in everything. I know you will still trying to bait me, but never forget: The text board is easy to control, just as you see. Even in 100 years I'm still here and will be shitposting.
I've told you often enough what you must do, nothing else matters
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 10:47
>>122
Nayx, stop trying to act tough on the internet and go back to your shitty german forum. That's where your friends are, no? Go shitpost among them instead.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:25
>>123
Too bad they followed me everywhere. Here on the BBS, to 4chan, stalked my MAL and twitter account, and came even to the IRC. And since the IRC sakuga core is still on their site, i just will have to keep going with my hobby I guess!
Not that's a bad thing, since you all are mad as fuck. Although I gave you so much chances. Guess you need a brain to see it, right?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:31
>>124
And don't forget that you still stalking every step of mine. My knowledge isn't for retards like you from anipodium. It's a waste, just keep to your Guilty Crown, SAO, MoS, Nolan, TDKR, [C] and all the other utter shit products you love
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:32
It seems you're getting more and more desperate.
Great
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:33
>>124
Sounds like you have enemies that only exist in your imagination. Seek some medical help.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:40
I still don't understand why you thought I wouldn't put up resistance. You couldn't handle me on anipodium, so you thought it could work here or on 4chan? SERIOUSLY?
>>127
Yeah, Adore keep crying. You see, THAT'S how you do revenge. You simply lack the competence
>>128
How nice of you to assume I'm an anipodium user. Hint: I'm not. I do not care about that website or your grievances with the community there. I am trying to comprehend your absurd behaviour though, and it would be nice if you'd fuck off.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:46
>>127
Have you finally lost some weight, Adore? Or are you still proud of that fat nose of yours?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:52
>>130 How nice of you to assume I'm an anipodium user
Where did I do that? I know quite well that you leaved anipodium even before me, Adore/Hibari. You started a new career:
Stalker. How suitable for you. Too bad you don't know your limits.
and it would be nice if you'd fuck off
But I was here before you and at that time I cared about the thread and sakuga and didn't tried to shitpost
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 11:59
>>132
Guess your obsession with those so-called stalkers of yours has impaired your capacity to think rationally, assuming everyone here is a stalker of some sort. Once again, I don't know or care about you and your problems. I've been here since the first thread and it's really pathetic that you, another long-time user decides to shit up the thread due to being butthurt with some people on twitter or other internet communities. Grow up.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 12:04
See? After all that technical shit you've done and all the people you searched (cause you know nothing about anything), find and convinced that I'm in the wrong, you still can't do anything against me. Even when 30+ people tried their best under combined power to destroy me, you've still lost.
And all that just because I should stop posting. Hilarious
Why is that GIF despite the amount of awful CG better animated than all episodes from KLK?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 13:31
Now that I think about it, Adore, that was also from you, right?
your post reeks of bait because of your grammatical error
Yeah, easy to harass you with such retarded statements. Jesus.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 13:39
animation quality supervisor
Why are you putting that up at your twitter, Adore/Hibari/Hibaristalker? It's not like you know anything about animation. And neither at the IRC nor on your twitter account (the few times I visited) did you talked about animation ever. Just to be cool?
You won't be as cool as Tyrnos though, he's still the coolest guy on anipodium. TYRNOS MY MOTHAFUCKA!!!!!!!!!!!!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 13:41
“I’ll sing a love song to Kal! WITH THE DEAD BODIES OF THESE PILOTS."
Care to tell me, how this is romantic?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 13:42
In german:
Oh Adore, was hast du dir dabei nur gedacht...
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 13:45
hat's a lot of friendship (btw, do we have something decent to ballpark it with in the dailies?)
HOLY FUCK ADORE/HIBARI!! THERE'S A GRAMMATICAL ERROR!! STOP BAITING YOUR TWITTER FRIENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-18 14:13
So instead of reddit, all bad stuff comes from /v/ now? You know, /v/ is also WAY better than anipodium. In any way!
It's pretty sad when you have to spam an unmoderated text board to vent your anger at an unrelated site because you are too incompetent to do anything to the site in question.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-19 3:41
I mention anipodium destroyed 4chan and took all the good things from it
Suddenly there are posts on /tv/ against /v/ or Reddit user and newfags everywhere
Anipodium logic, ladies and gentleman, anipodium logic
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-19 3:48
>>155
Why are you still crying is really beyond me. It was your own decision to go against me. Like I said already:
- Stalking me like crazy and following me to every place (you know where I am even without me posting, just visiting)
- Trying to fuck with me (Thank god no one of you has a human brain)
- Destroy 4chan and turning it into an forum-like state just because you can't accept that you have absolute shit taste and/or are just braindead
- Trolling the BBS since summer
So, as long as anipodium is still around, I will do my best to ruin your internet time and make you also famous
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-19 3:51
And don't forget, that no one of you do know shit about any animation related stuff. The best proof that you just came over to fight with me.
Now let's see what Adore has written in the meantime
Come on Adore, tell us something about animation. Doesn't matter where.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-19 4:08
But wait, you can't, right? Cause you know nothing about it and the best you can do is to use my own comments and modify them a bit so you can go away with it. Just like in that case:
Anipodium is doing the same thing on 4chan about writing and directing. No interest at all, but still trying to be smart. One of the worst and most retarded places on the whole internet
One short part of it was okay animated, the rest was a disgusting slideshow. And yet the triggernigger claim KLK is animated and Imaishi is a great guy AND animator.
Lol Adore, you really pretending you're a guy? For all the people who still don't know it, Adore/Hibari/Hibaristalker is a girl of course, about 21 years old. In terms of her weight though...21 would only be a small proportion of the actual number...
No wonder you're watching weeaboo shit, you want to look like all the anime girls, right? RIGHT?
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-20 4:59
She's also very proud of her fat nose! She said it to me on ICQ one day.
Man, Adore, du bist echt so dämlich, da verschlägt es einem die Sprache. Da warne ich dich noch extra vor und das einzige, was du tun musst ist sich einfach nur zu verpissen. ABER NEIN!!!! Du kannst ja nicht genug kriegen, du kannst erst aufhören, wenn ich nie wieder was schreibe, dann erst bist du zufrieden, nicht wahr?
Na, Herzlichen Glückwunsch!
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-20 5:21
Adore's nationality is turkish
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-20 5:21
Her parents are divorced
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-20 5:22
She visits her Dad every sunday
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-20 5:23
Hates his new women, cause she's so mean to little Adore.
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-20 5:26
Her dad is so strict religious, he didn't even have internet
Name:
Anonymous2014-03-20 5:27
Or maybe because he know that PC & the internet made you so fat, Adore?
I watched Disney's Snow White (1937) and holy fuck was that good! With such works you could see that the guys behind it REALLY wanted to give it their all and make it as good as possible. It just shows in every second. What a fantastic movie. There is even more animation than in Alice and Fantasia 1940; all that animal stuff and the dwarves, holy shit.
And today? When people like Imaishi and Watanabe are hyped for a project it turns out to be utter shit like KLK and Space Dandy for braindead otaku/weeaboo scum who just want to see tits and asses with garbage scripts, piss poor productions in almost every way and don't forget bad animation for the most time. Well, KLK had no animation at all...
Care to explain why that GIF is better animated than Shit la Shit?
Name:
Anonymous2014-04-02 4:13
Time for weeaboo stories here too!
Name:
Anonymous2014-04-02 4:14
For starters, I follow this blog for the insane amounts of humor that comes from it. However, I didn’t particularly think that I’d be posting on here. So, here goes.
I work at a Food Lion in Tennessee. Now, for those who don’t know anything about Tennessee, let me start by saying you aren’t missing much. There’s mountains, beer, smelly redneck people who are practically a culture of their own, John Deere, and some more beer. Towards what you would call the “inner city” of my town, though it’s not particularly big, there reside the few normal people like myself.
So, I work at this Food Lion, right? Well, it’s on the outskirts sort of. Not really in town, but not really on the mountain either. (It’s ironically next to my old high school, which is actually in a mountain valley. lol.) Well, the kids in this area are completely fascinated by anything with more interest than a blade of grass. When I was in school, the weaboos and whatnot strayed and stayed at MTAC. I knew of a few friends who had obsessions, but I’ve never had that joy of running into an actual weaboo myself. Until a few hours ago.
I enjoy anime. When I was younger, I was raised on shows like Tenchi, Sailor Moon, Outlaw Star, and Cowboy Bebop. You know, what could be considered classics are far as popularity and whatnot. I watch it on my own, and I don’t really associate too hard with people who like it, even my friends. I just enjoy it more by myself. I prefer certain genres, while they like things like Hetalia and whatnot. That’s just not my thing. I’ll stick to some Trigun, thanks. My obsession, however, comes not from anime, but from KPop.
Truth be told, I just really like asian music as a whole. Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, and whatever else you throw at me. I get so bored with the same shit being produced in the states, and there’s always something cool or different about the music produced overseas. (And i’m not just talking about the language difference either, lol.)
There’s a popular group called SHINee, and they have these pictures (I’m not sure where they’re from as I’m not a huge fan of them, and I don’t stan them) of them in these animal pajamas. The main vocalist, Jonghyun, wore these cute tiger pj’s. I’m incredibly familiar with them because I just recently got a pair for my younger sister, who adores the group, especially Jonghyun. (Oh, the days of fangirling when you’re young lol)
So, I’m at work. These two girls walk in, one of which was wearing a pair of Jjong’s tiger PJs. As I said, I’m incredibly familiar with these. I don’t know where they’re from, but the tiger set is a set i’ve seen consistantly for the last week or so. lol. So, they get in my check out line, and the two girls are talking. There’s a bit of a putrid smell lingering in the air, but I blow it off figuring it was one of the other customers. As I said, people in this area apparently aren’t familiar with personal hygiene. So, I casually comment. ”Hey, nice pjs. I bought some for my sister. Are you a Shawol, too?” (Shawol is SHINee’s fanclub.)
This girl looks at me with the most incredulous face. The other girl just rolls her eyes and walks away. I’m sitting there holding a box of soap (irony at its best), trying to figure out what the hell I said wrong. She looks at me and goes, ”Excuse me. I do not associate with that Korean stuff. These pajamas are from Hetalia. Except I really like tigers, so I found these.”
So I said, ”Oh, well I know they’re the ones Jonghyun has from SHINee. That’s why I commented. Er, sorry about the mixup.” Mind you, I’m being polite. I don’t like nasty teenagers with nasty attitudes.
I continue scanning their items, and she continues to give me the death glare. Then, and of all things she could say, she goes, ”You know, Korean’s make the Japanese look bad. Only Japanese can cosplay and do it right. One day, when I’m in Japan writing manga, I’m going to make sure Korean’s don’t like it. In fact, I’ll make fun of them.. What’s my fucking total?”
Needless to say, I was angry. Instead of checking them out, I literally walked away. Left everything as it was, and walked away.
I don’t care if your a fan of anime, Kpop, or anything related to the Asian culture. Have respect. Also, don’t be a fucking idiot. Thanks!
Name:
Anonymous2014-04-02 4:14
As a required part of college, I’m suppose to take a few semesters of a language course. Being a quarter Japanese I decided on good old “Nihongo” because I felt I could learn better knowing I could practice within the family.
On the first day, we were asked why we decided on one of the most difficult language we could possibly learn. The majority response, “To watch Anime without subtitles” or “To read Japanese Manga.” I rolled my eye at the thought that most of my class being weebs, but it was eventually put to the back of my mind. But it wasn’t until this girl, let’s call her P, who would always resurrect that tumor-us thought.
She would wear rather obscure clothing and sit in the corner of the room and read her manga while the professor taught the class. And the way she spoke…I swear based on the way she sounded, her motivation for taking the class to be a anime voice actor from Japan. It was like listening to a Japanese school girl if she had her voice box has been thrown into a blender.
Eventually we got to a section of Japanese 1 where we learned about different form of questions. Today’s example, the “WHO” form. An exercise we did that day involved one person sitting facing away from the rest of class and would try to guess another person in a class based on the sound of their voice, who would say “Who am I?” in Japanese.
One boy, we’ll call him Y, was chosen to sit in the chair and guess while P was picked to be the speaker. Now the other students would actually have trouble making out the voices, since we all really didn’t know one another, and would have 3 guess before we switched people. But once P opened up her mouth of Sugoi he immediately knew and responded with out skipping a beat, “P-san”.
She was flustered as to how she was guessed correctly so quickly and asked with a shrill, “HOW DID YOU KNOW?” To which Y responded, “Because you’re the only voice in this class that sounds like an anime girl.” I was shocked at how blatantly honest he was, but sadly it was the truth. She, of course, pouted the rest of the class and hid her nose in one of her mangas trying to ignore everyone else. And I never saw her again after that semester.
Name:
Anonymous2014-04-02 4:26
>>200
I've got something to add. Anipodium made a new chart, still retarded and bad as fuck - just like it's user.
Oh come on Adore, everyone knows already that anime are made for braindead idiots (Otakus and Weeaboos), so of course it must be dumb. And yes, almost all anime are very stupid
Not like you should complain about the stupidity of others
Oh Adore, did you started with the jogging already? You know, you can always run to your father on saturdays. There you can sleep after that the whole time and don't need to cry because your stepmother was so mean again!