WARNING: This post contains Prometheus spoilers.
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus prompted a lot of questions from cinemagoers, like “What the f—?” and “No, seriously: What the f—?” We can’t provide answers for either of those queries. But we can resolve the question of what Michael Fassbender’s android David said to the Engineer just prior to the alien going ape and trying to kill everyone in sight.
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For fans of cult movies, Internet treasure troves don’t get much more treasure-y — or, I guess, trove-y — than Trailers From Hell!, the site where Gremlins director Joe Dante and his fellow “grindhouse gurus” talk viewers through vintage film promo clips.
The staggeringly successful Resident Evil movie franchise is one of my big guilty pleasures. The films’ zombie-featuring carnage, enjoyably preposterous plot twists, and apparent propensity for cladding star Milla Jovovich in items from the Hustler store’s S&M spring collection more than make up for any arguable lack of Chekhovian character development.
The trailer for the fifth RE movie, Resident Evil: Retribution, has just hit the web and looks encouraging. Which is to say, it boasts undead mayhem, the presence of characters who shuffled off this mortal coil way back in the first movie, and the sight of Jovovich wearing the kind of outfit more usually associated with newspaper stories headlined NAKED SENATOR ARRESTED IN DUNGEON-BROTHEL STING.
Image Credit: Alan Markfield
If you thought the romantic triangle at the center of The Twilight Saga was complicated, then you haven’t yet experienced the passions at the center of Stephenie Meyer’s other novel, The Host, also a feature film arriving in theaters on March 29, 2013.
Set on an Earth that has been overrun by body-snatching aliens called “souls,” the story follows Melanie (Saoirse Ronan), one of the last humans left on the planet, after her body has been inhabited by the well-traveled soul known as Wanderer (or Wanda, for short). Melanie’s strong-willed consciousness cajoles Wanda into the American desert to find Melanie’s uncle Jeb (William Hurt), her brother Jamie (Chandler Canterbury), and her boyfriend Jared (Max Irons). But once Wanda comes upon this ragtag band hiding out in a network of caves, she begins to develop feelings herself for another human, Ian O’Shea (Jake Abel, Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief, I Am Number Four, The Lovely Bones). So, to recap: Jared loves Melanie, whose body is controlled by Wanda, who is in love with Ian.
In this exclusive first look at Ian’s character in The Host, Abel talks about what he calls the “love box” between the four characters, his thoughts on Ian’s progressive attitude towards the souls, and what it was like working with Meyer and the film’s writer-director, Andrew Niccol (Gattica, In Time). Check it out below! READ FULL STORY »
How do you promote a sci-fi movie about sinister advertisements which not only influence your actions and desires but control them?
Why, with a sinister advertisement of course!
Below, check out the exclusive QR code-equipped poster for Branded, due to hit screens Sept. 7. Starring Ed Stoppard, Leelee Sobieski, Jeffrey Tambor, Ingeborga Dapkunaite, and Max von Sydow, the movie nods toward both The Matrix and John Carpenter’s They Live (that’s if you believe the trailer, which you’ll also find below). READ FULL STORY »
If you left Prometheus thinking, “Well, that was certainly intense, but what it was missing was more baffling philosophical exploration into Freidrich Nietzsche’s concept of the Übermensch,” you’re in luck! (Note: SPOILERS follow.)
Eagle-eyed and endlessly patient moviegoers noticed that at the very end of the end credits for Prometheus, a logo for the fictional Weyland Corporation rolled onto the screen, with the tagline “Building Better Worlds Since 10. 11. 12″ and an address for the “corporate timeline” for Weyland Industries. That timeline does indeed note that the company was founded on October 11, 2012, but it’s been available online for a while now. It turns out this end credits bumper was really pointing to a brand new easter egg: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: 20th Century Fox Guillermo del Toro spent 20 years trying to bring horror author H.P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness to the big screen. Why did Ridley Scott’s Prometheus finally force him to abandon the project earlier this year? And might Mountains—like the book’s ancient monsters—yet come back from the dead?
(Warning: This article contains Prometheus spoilers.)
Image Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images
The loss of Ray Bradbury, who passed away on Monday at the age of 91, leaves an enormous void in the world of science fiction. His works, which included Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, influenced generations of readers who became fans who became epic storytellers themselves. Epic storytellers — like Steven Spielberg. The director of films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T., honored the author with a statement on Wednesday: “He was my muse for the better part of my sci-fi career. He lives on through his legion of fans. In the world of science fiction and fantasy and imagination he is immortal.”
Spielberg and Bradbury were kindred spirits who saw hope in the future and deep space. Back in 2003, Bradbury told the Newark Star Ledger that, “Close Encounters is the best film of its kind ever made. It takes too long, but the transfiguration at the end, with the splendid arrival of the mother ship — that makes up for everything. I was so amazed and changed when I saw it that I went over to the studio to tell Spielberg what a genius he was. And he said, ‘You know, I never would have done this film if I hadn’t seen [your] It Came From Outer Space when I was a kid.”
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Ray Bradbury, ‘Fahrenheit 451′ author, dead at 91
It’s no secret that John Carter went through extensive additional photography in its two-year gestation period from production to premiere. While director Andrew Stanton gave a full-throated defense of the new scenes as a part of the creative process he’d learned while working at Pixar, the bad press caused by them contributed to the impression that John Carter was a troubled movie.
One of the biggest scenes that Stanton reshot was the opening to the film. In its Oct., 2011, profile of Stanton, The New Yorker chronicled the Pixar brain trust’s reaction to the scene, which heavily featured Lynn Collins as Barsoomian (i.e. Martian) Princess Dejah Thoris: “[T]hey were confused by the film’s beginning, in which Princess Dejah delivered a lecture about the state of the Barsoomian wars, and they found her arch and stony.”
The opening was re-imagined with a pithier history of the Barsoomian wars, cutting directly to a pitched aerial battle, and much of Collins’ scene was reshot and placed later in the film. But you can see the original scene in this exclusive clip from the John Carter Blu-ray edition (out June 5) below. Many of the visual effects are not complete; the shots of rock faces in the Arizona and Utah desert, for example, were meant to be digitally remade into the crumbling edifices of once-great Barsoomian buildings. But the thrust of the scene is still clear. Check it out: READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Everett Collection
Thirty years ago, Ridley Scott kickstarted his career with Alien and Blade Runner, a dark pair of weird-future genre flicks that redefined the whole visual grammar of big-screen science-fiction. This summer, Scott is releasing Prometheus, the mysterious semi-prequel to Alien. Now, after many months of rumor-mongering, it looks like the director will be making a return trip to his other sci-fi classic. In a press release, Alcon Entertainment announced that Hampton Fancher, one of the two credited writers on the original Blade Runner, is planning to reunite with Scott to work on a sequel to the movie. READ FULL STORY »
