What's keeping me out of the theatre....

You have a good point. But "Alien" seemed to at least try to be headier.

 

I don't see it that way. That film just took much more time to establish the characters, give the audience a real chance to like them, care about them so that the shock of their awful deaths is even greater.

 

Thanks for the recommendation! I had never heard of that film before.

After watching it I'll have to add it to my collection. Few films make it onto my Philip K. Dick shelf without having some direct connection to Dick's writing in some way. This will be the second to have that honor (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind being the first). This film captures many of the elements of my favorite Dick novel, Eye in the Sky.

Thanks again for bringing it to my attention.

 

Alien is all sub-text and artistry--from the set designs by Ron Cobb to the alien sculptures (because that's what they were) by H.R. Giger all but make it a movie that should be shown in a museum; it surpasses 2001 and even Scott's own Blade Runner visually.

I also think it has a far superior script and cast. Alien is the most real-feeling SF movie I've ever seen.

 

Well, I wouldn't go all that far
But you are certainly right when it comes to the design of things in that film (crawling, jumping, flying vaginas and the Alien itself: all-phallic)

 

There's even a major shout-out to PKD in the movie, by way of The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch: note the fast food they eat is from a restaraunt called Perky Pat's.

Speaking of Eternal Sunshine, did you know that Charlie Kaufman once wrote a screenplay for A Scanner Darkly? He's very strongly influenced by Dick, it seems. Synecdoche, NY is a good film, too, though very bleak and almost punishing to watch.

Can't tell you how glad I am you liked eXistenZ, though.

Yeah, the face huggers are yonic and phallic all at once. And check out John Hurt's space pajamas, laced up like a Whitechapel strumpet, 'e is, 'e is. There's a lot of psychosexual anxiety right beneath the surface.

 

I can't believe that I've missed out on that movie for this long.

Really? I would have loved to have seen that.

It is funny that you bring up A Scanner Darkly as I was just watching that DVD the night before last (along with reading some passages out of The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick) because my wife and I are planning to go see 800 Words: The Transmigration Of Philip K. Dick later this week.

Again, thanks for bringing up eXistenZ. I realized that I had seen a review of it when it came out that did it no justice at all. I don't think I would have ever even considered it until I read your description.

 

Very on point: http://www.californiachronicle.com/articles/yb/130668300

 

Good review!

One thing that did irk me is covered in that review - you don't build the command staff a vessel by picking up strays and exiles along the way. They aren't the escaped prisoners of Farscape or the militant rebels of Blake's Seven. It's already been pointed out how absurd it was to have Kirk, currently under reprimand and not even an academy graduate, in command at the end of the film, but I also must ask how in the hell was Scotty suddenly the chief engineer in this movie?

 

Glad to be of service. And I regard you and your wife with grinding envy--that play sounds great!

 

I agree that Aliens has little to do with Alien and was just a scary action flick. If memory serves, there was more drama to Alien 3 (than to Aliens). Good acting and presence from the actors. Although if I am not remembering much from this movie, it isn't a good sign... Perhaps too gritty to register.

And 2001 bore me like everybody else. I felt compelled to read the book to make sense of it and after that, I think I had no use for the movie - although (sorry, my memory of the book is almost non-existent. I was quite young) I'm not sure the movie focused on the same things as the book. I was still a bit puzzled after reading tho book... but liked the ending.

Now what fault are people finding with Blade Runner?

 

I just heard from a friend that since the movie has come out, sales of TOS season sets have shot up 400%.

 

Alien was a horror movie. Aliens was first and foremost a war movie.

 

I've watched TOS as much as you have, W9, and Court Maritial was the very first episode I ever bought on tape, when the VHS blue-boxes came out in the States.

But the new film is Star Trek without trying to be TOS. TOS is over and done, and unless we can get everyone in a time machine and a resurrection ship, it's never coming back.

All of this is like Loki/Bele. Warped9 and his hatred of nuTOS will fight forever.

 

Because TOS never had a "Huh? WTF was that" moment...

 

Usually folks who find fault with BLADE RUNNER are the ones who are bored by 2001, so I'd say ask yourself.

 

I gotta laugh when some express the notion that because nuTrek isn't EXACTLY like TOS we can't be happy.

News Flash! We dion't expect it to be exactly like TOS. We do hope, though, that it could have some measure of smarts that TOS has been known to deliver.

But instead we're supposed to be entranced and distracted by the film equivalent of a bleached blonde stripper with HUGE tits hgangin' out who also happens to be DUMB AS SHIT!

 

The new film isn't exactly that either.

 

Hence my comment about Viet Cong termites.

EDIT (Back to Star Trek): Oh, I love dumb strippers so long as they deliver in the champagne room. This movie delivered.

 

If we're going with the stripper analogy, she's apparently biased against gingers.