I apologize for being such a negative S.O.B. this week, but at least it seems to help with other blogs‘ dry spells as far as comments go, so I’m going to continue my “concern trolling” today in order to announce my low expectation for this Alienprequel, for which Fox reportedly is now bringing Ridley Scott back to the franchise to direct. I have a general distaste for prequels, so I’m obviously biased. I admit this completely. But what could really be the benefit to this? So we can actually witness the back story of the xenomorphs? If this is to be like most villain origins, I anticipate finding out the aliens were all orphans and/or had lost a childhood love to disease.
Okay, fine, I’ll end on a positive, hopeful note: if Scott can make the prequel less an explanation for why the xenomorphs are so evil and instead make an Alien film that’s basically Black Hawk Downin space (or is that what Cameron’s Alienswas?), I will totally be on board for this. I do like both Alien³and Alien: Resurrection, so I guess I’m pretty much obligated to give this a chance.
Check out the rest of the film blog reactions after the jump: …Read more
Although published in 1994, Bret Easton Ellis’ The Informers is surely a product of the 1980s, reconstructing the decades’ tireless myths via a collection of terse, loosely interconnected short stories that the author wrote while still a Bennington debutante. I doubt I’ll ever get to see the early version of Gregor Jordan’s adaptation of The Informers that Ellis referred to as “an outstanding movie floating out there somewhere” in his recentinterview with Scott Tobias over at A.V. Club, but the version that will make its way to theaters today is a hopelessly boring effort, one which only escapes its slapdash aesthetic when it verges on camp transcendence, exploiting its aging cast’s built-in Hollywood in the sleazy 80s vibe. It’s by no means however, quite as gut wrenchingly unwatchable as a few of zeitgeist-leeching 80s lit adaptations below, many of which happen to be authored by Ellis’ brat pack co-conspirators.
Both are broadly classifiable as science fiction, but Alien is basically a horror flick and Aliens has all the conventions of a war film. That’s a pretty slick transition from one type of movie to another, especially since the switch was so immediate within the series. Most movie franchises don’t play with genre in such a way until they’ve gone through a number of sequels, and even then the series usually just simply takes its characters into outer space, a la Moonraker, Jason X and Leprechaun 4.
Genre jumping isn’t that easy, though, unless a franchise inhabits a whole universe in which to expand through. Like Star Wars, for example. Originally a film series, the Star Wars franchise spread out into novels, which has allowed for dips into the romance genre and now horror. That’s right, an upcoming novel by horror author Joe Schreiber, titled Deathtroopers, takes the Star Wars universe into frightening territory described by Schreiber as “in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose of William Gibson mixed in.”
So, if Star Wars can venture into the horror genre, what other movie franchises should attempt a genre jump? To toy with the idea, we’ve selected five film series in need of a change and suggested a possible redirection of genre for each. …Read more
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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I apologize for being such a negative S.O.B. this week, but at least it seems to 
