Wednesday, August 20, 2014

049: Prometheus (2012) - The Tragedy of Meredith Vickers, Princess of Weyland Corp.

http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/media/vickers_relaxing_on_prometheus_set.jpg

SPOILERS FOR ALIEN (1979), ALIENS (1986), ALIEN3 (1992), ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997), and PROMETHEUS (2012)

In this episode:
  • Cleolinda Jones joins us once again!
  • And she's going to be at Dragon Con this year! She'll be on or at several panels, including the Hannibal Fannibals pannibal (say that three times fast) at 1PM on Saturday, August 30th and the Dream Logic and Murder Wizardry panel at 10PM on Sunday, August 1st. And she'll be giving away some awesome stuff--listen for more details!
  • Fio and I will also be attending a few upcoming conventions, although in much less professional capacity. Fio will be at Baltimore Comic-Con the weekend of September 6th, and I'll be at Scare-a-Con 2014 on Saturday, September 12th!
  • Discussion of the 2012 Ridley Scott film Prometheus, including the good ideas, the bad ideas, the utterly nonsensical ideas, and the all-around wackadoo nature of the film.
  • The writer of this movie seemed to be more interested in writing David than anything else, but we all would've liked to see more of the Shaw/David relationship explored.
  • For some reason Ridley Scott thinks leaving things out makes more sense.
    • Alright, to be perfectly fair, Blade Runner is a million times better without the narration. Did that change burn Ridley so bad that he just wants to make the rest of his movies incomprehensible?
  • Pacing. It's a thing.
  • Here are links to the deleted scenes Cleo mentioned:
  • This brings us to the end of our 2014 Summer Movie Series! Let us know in the comments here or on Tumblr what you'd like to hear us discuss next.
THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:
  • As of the writing of this post, I am 99% sure I'll be at Scare-a-Con. I waffled a bit on the podcast, but now I'm pretty certain. 
  • Wolven's Tumblr is wolvensnothere.tumblr.com, as in "Wolven's not here," not "Wolven's not there," as we say on the podcast. Knot naut naught knawt.
  • RE: the comments on how Marc Streitenfeld wrote the music for Prometheus backwards and then reversed the recording: It wasn't the main melodic theme he did that with (which, as it happens, seems to have been written by Harry Gregson-Williams)--I think it was just the score in general, and you can definitely hear it in the moodier music on the soundtrack album. Here's the section of the Wikipedia article on it.
Music:
  • Opening: Prometheus Trailer
  • Intro: "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
  • Outro: "Life" - Harry Gregson-Williams, Prometheus Original Soundtrack | YouTube | iTunes |
(Header image taken from http://www.prometheus2-movie.com/gallery/view/img/790)

http://archive.org/download/AMOT049/AMOT049.mp3

      Wednesday, August 6, 2014

      048: Alien: Resurrection (1997) - The Research Song

       We've all been there...right?

      SPOILERS FOR ALIEN (1979), ALIENS (1986), ALIEN3 (1992), ALIEN: RESURRECTION (1997), SILENT HILL (2006), FIREFLY 1x05, Starcraft, X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (2014), and WORLD WAR Z (book and 2013 film).

      In this episode:
      • Fio's friend Joe joins us for our discussion!
      • Discussion of Alien: Resurrection (1997), including Joss Whedon's writing, the interesting (but not altogether well-executed) ideas in the script, weird acting/writing choices, and where this movie rates in our heads against the previous movies.
      • Joe sheds light on some of the Alien comics that may have influenced the screenplay for Alien: Resurrection.
      • What themes are present in the script? Could they really decide which they wanted to focus on?
      • Human vs. construct--was this explored to its fullest extent?
      • How 90s is this movie, really?
      • Interpretations of how the Alien Queen ended up with a womb in this film and why the Humalien Hybrid kills the queen. The fact that we have to spend a decent chunk of this podcast debating our interpretations of this sequence of events is evidence enough that this film is just really not clear.
      • After Joe leaves, Ian gives his non-spoilery thoughts on The Strain, Guillermo del Toro's vampire/epidemic horror TV series currently airing on FX. In short: It's cool! ...But kind of uneven. Also: body horror.
      • At some point, we're going to devote an episode or two of the podcast to the Silent Hill movie(s). I mean, if we have to. *heavy breathing*
      • Next time: Cleolinda joins us once again for the final movie in our Summer Movie series: Prometheus!
      THERE'S ALWAYS AN ADDENDUM:
      • Joe had to leave somewhere around the 1 hour mark, but we don't really give any indication for the listener's benefit that he's left at that point. Apologies.
      • I think at some point (when we're trying to figure out how long after Alien3 this movie was) I accidentally said Alien3 came out in '93 instead of '92. My mistake.
      • Compare Fio's Research song to Data's Scanning for Lifeforms song
      • Highlights from Fio's timestamps:
        • 6:09 - Based on our sample size thus far, 100% of the people who have seen the Alien movies were too young to see the Alien movies.
        • 1:32:22 - “We’ve pretty much exhausted our topics” Oh have we, Fio? Have we? Because there are twENTY FUCKING MINUTES LEFT.
        • Anybody who figured we were going to spend a good portion of this Podcast talking about Firefly, Starcraft, X-Men: Days of Future Past, World War Z, a huge diversion on The Strain, and giving a random shout-out to Apt Pupil, you deserve a cookie.
        • So I’m getting the feeling that we think Call is the most interesting character in this movie. I don’t think I’m wrong in this. IAN: Definitely the most interesting new character, at the very least. Alien!Ripley's pretty interesting, if written a little vaguely.

      Music:
      • Intro: "This is My Design" - original song, music by Ian. More on this as it develops.
      • Outro: "Human" - The Killers | YouTube | iTunes |
      (Screencap taken from http://www.metacafe.com/watch/mv-hRMGg/alien_resurrection_mutation/)