Aliens vs Chuck Norris

Thanks to Paul for sending me the pic.

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V - The new series - Lizard people in human skin. David Icke was right. Run away.

It is good to see two of the Serenity crew back on TV.

Today, the world woke up to find spaceships over every major city. The Visitors claim to have come in peace, bringing gifts of medical miracles and technological breakthroughs. They promise to do no harm. They’re lying.

Most people believe the aliens have arrived just when we needed them most. We’re eager to embrace their generous offers of help, but while tracking a terrorist cell, Homeland Security agent Erica Evans stumbles upon something far more sinister. Erica discovers that the aliens have plans to infiltrate our governments and businesses, planting seeds for their plot to control mankind. Convincing anyone of the truth will be impossible because the Visitors have two powerful weapons. First, they’ve given the people faith with their reassuring presence and gifts. Second, they’ve rallied our youth. Thousands of teens, including Erica’s son, have been recruited as ‘Peace Ambassadors’ but they’re actually serving as unwitting spies. When Erica gets thrust into the resistance movement, she’ll have to balance her covert activities with her job and her role as a mother, fighting to protect her son Tyler - even as he joins forces with the enemy.

From executive producer Scott Peters, Emmy-nominated creator of The 4400, comes a bold re-imagining of the sci-fi classic. Let the invasion begin.

The cast includes Elizabeth Mitchell, Alan Tudyk, Morena Baccarin, Laura Vandervoort, Joel Gretsch, Morris Chestnut, Christopher Shyer, Lourdes Benedicto, David Richmond-Peck, Logan Huffman, Stefan Arngrim, and Jesse Wheeler. The show is scheduled to air later this year.

What do you reckon? Good or bad? I miss Donovan.

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Dark Castle have The Nye Incidents - The truth is out there

Dark Castle, the Warner Bros.-based horror label, has picked up rights to Devil's Due graphic novel The Nye Incidents, from sci-fi and horror novelist Whitley Strieber and Craig Spector. Dark Castle are the people that brought you House on Haunted Hill, Thir13en Ghosts, Ghost Ship, Gothika, and The Reaping.

Inspired by true events, the comic follows the exploits of Lynn Devlin. Lynn is a medical examiner who thinks she has seen everything Nye County has to throw at her. She copes with methodical, rational logic. But when a grotesque murder of a supposed alien abductee occurs that cannot be solved with her scalpel and microscope, Lynn finds her detachment is shattered, and her dreams haunted by large dark, oval-shaped eyes. Now, only one thing is certain: There's a killer loose in the alien abductee community… human or otherwise.

No scribe has yet been hired to pen the script. Todd Lincoln will direct.

Strieber is best known for "The Wolfen" (that was a great film) and "The Hunger," which were adapted into pics in the 1980s, as well as alien abduction tale "Communion." "The Coming Global Superstorm," a book he co-wrote with Art Bell, inspired Fox's tentpole "The Day After Tomorrow."

In their book, Spector said he focused on forensic aspects, setting up the question whether a serial killer was imitating aliens or vice versa. UFO researcher Dr. Roger Leir joined the program for a segment and noted that in the New Jersey cases, a medical professional told him the men were cut in a style similar to the cattle mutilations, with large amounts of hemoglobin found on the edges of the wounds. He also discussed the 'Chupa chupa' UFO attacks in Brazil, which took place in 1977.

Lincoln, who had previously been attached to a remake of "The Fly" at Fox Searchlight, will also serve as a producer on "Nye." He is attached to helm "Hack/Slash" for Rogue.

The video below has the authors chatting about the comic book.

Source: Variety

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District 9 - First photo from the Peter Jackson produced Sci-Fi film

District 9 is slowly filtering through to the mainstream. I last posted a few videos and things on it back in January (including Neill Blomkamp's short that it is based on - check them all out).

An extraterrestrial race forced to live in slum-like conditions in Johannesburg, South Africa suddenly find a kindred spirit in a government agent that is exposed to their mysterious biotechnology.

District 9 is both written and directed by first-timer Neill Blomkamp. Blomkamp is the South African born short film and commercial director who was hired to direct a big screen adaptation of Halo before “financial problems” forced the project back into development. District 9 is a sci-fi project produced by Peter Jackson.

Seen in the photo above (via /film) is the character Wikus (Sharlto Copley), a Multi-National United agent who becomes infected by alien biotechnology. He must go on the run from the oppressive government into District 9, a internment camp where "non-humans" have been forced to live since landing on Earth nearly 30 years ago.

There was trailer due out with Crank 2: High Voltage, but it was pulled. However, as District 9 is due out in August we should be seeing a trailer very soon.

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Back to Frank Black - Lance Henriksen on Millenium

The good people over at Back to Frank Black have got a campaign going to get the great actor Lance Henrikson (Aliens, The Terminator, Near Dark) back on a big or small screen as Frank Black in the excellent Millenium. They recently posted the first part of a three part interview with the man himself (some highlights below).

Head on over and show your support. I always felt Lance was a superb actor (if you didn't know he was going to be the original Terminator and went around with foil on his teeth with James Cameron to get the studios interest) and should be in a lot more classic movies.

BACKTOFRANKBLACK: Do you think the return of Frank Black is a possibility? Are you still interested in playing Frank again - you were very optimistic at the conventions this past year.

LANCE HENRIKSEN: Yeah, I know, I would absolutely love to do it and I really think it is a possibility, but it's really up to Frank Spotnitz and Chris Carter.

BTFB: If Frank Black and Millennium returned in some form, what would be your preference in the form it would return and why?

LANCE: A movie would be very different. With a movie you have an end in sight - you can gear your energy for it, but when you have a [TV] series that goes on for ten and a half months - there is no way to really have that "end in sight" because you know you'll be coming back next year. It's very tiring.

BTFB: So would a movie be ideal?

LANCE: Yeah. Ideally.

BTFB: Can I just ask you about Frank's gift? Another fan favorite for debate. Chris has said on the DVD it was originally intended in season one to be simply a depiction of Frank's intuition, yet even in season one there is a flavor of something more mystical going on. Were you briefed on this possibility?

LANCE: Well let me say this: you know how a great chess player works, right? They study, they study, they study - they know all the moves of different great chess players? I always felt Frank Black had morphed into a person who put abstract loose ends together in his head in a way that other people couldn't. He could take threads of an idea and they would suddenly appear to him almost a linear story. In other words, walking into a room he would see pieces of a puzzle like a great chess player and he would string them together. And that's what I always thought - that the Gift was intellect and intuition - not psychic. I don't know how you would describe a psychic actually - I couldn't describe one - except a gift from God, like Moses talking to him or a luminary or some stuff. To me, it was something much more.. kind of pragmatic.

I always felt Chris understood that I didn't want to judge anybody. I didn't want Frank Black to be a judge or a puritan who sat on the edge of "this is good/bad". No Gift would work in your brain if you had judgments going on. The Gift was only about discovering the intent and the function of what was happening.

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Exclusive Interview: Kenny Carpenter - Salvaging Outer Space

I posted the trailer for Salvaging Outer Space a while back. The comments posted for it where both positive and negative. I was intrigued by the thing.

Then I got an email from the Kenny Carpenter, the filmmaker behind Salvaging Outer Space. He provided me with lots of information about the making of the film and was also happy to do an interview for the site.

I think it gives some idea as to what goes into making an independent film. Hopefully this will inspire some budding filmmakers out there to go out there and make that film they always wanted to make.

Have a read about the making of the film followed by my interview with Kenny Carpenter, then whack your thoughts in the comments section. If you have seen the film then let people know about it. Now over to Kenny:

With a sci-fi feel like "Startrek The Motion Picture", "A Scanner Darkly", & "Serenity", this stylish feature film combines live acting & anime to deliver a comic-style universe.

It's a film that's unrated, yet very family friendly!

While Captain Laruge (Kevin G. Cooper) & his crew are in search of a valuable salvage in deep space, armed ships appear out of nowhere & attempt to destroy them. Proper teamwork means success or death. However, in space.......trust is a rare find!

http://www.salvagingouterspace.com/

This is an independent feature that cost less than $20,000 US to produce, but was all that we had and treated it like a million, considering most Hollywood flicks cost 100M+ to make these days. It was done using HD cameras and live acting via greenscreen and almost all the cast were shot separately, eliminating scheduling issues and any cast switches. This is why greenscreen is awesome to use in filming independent features where no unions are involved to protect all parties involved during principal!

CGI was used for backgrounds and blended with live acting into pseudo cartoon using rotoscope type software, which we had to wait a year to catch up with our editing system's compatibility. All dialogue was captured like interviews, using consistent clip-on mics. While one documentary filmmaker was getting genius praise in magazines for using Cineform's Intermediate codecs to efficiently edit High Definition on PC's, we were already doing the same on an effects heavy scale in 1080 resolution. It was the only way at the time to keep resolution pure without noticeable video compression.

Storywise, when I wrote the movie, I wanted to fill a gap in Sci-Fi that was lost. That 70's into 80's space flick feel went out with all these space marine and horror/scifi one-offs. Many Startrek/Star Wars fanmade films were made, but let's face it...they are simply that! Salvaging Outer Space is original as I could get it, with exception to there being a ship in outer space with a captain and crew, albeit.....very small ship...the size of a large yacht, which it kind of looks like. It begged to be a pieced together look.

I wanted paranoia, mutiny, tragedy, love, friendship, greed, dark comedic humour, long-winded tech talk, advanced technology that could exist in the future even when watching the movie a few years from now, a darker time in a semi-post apocalyptic setting, comic book-style look and feel, sequel possible, classic sci-fi feel, getting personal with the characters, having the audience use character interactions to guage the 3D perspective of the background environment in the ship to get acquainted, good mix of music from symphonic keyboards to progressive rock, and honestly...a way to pull the audience away from their everyday lives altogether.

Making independent films is a tough business just to get produced, let alone making money back with hopes of some profit to share with cast/crew. Making a niche market product, like a science fiction piece, can either totally make or break you, I've come to find out.

Live for Films: Salvaging Outer Space makes the most of modern technology on a limited budget. Apart from the money side of things what was the most challenging aspect of the shoot?

Kenny Carpenter: Making the characters converse smoothly, despite most never met each other on shoots. The acting was mostly monologue style or acting off of me. They were all greenscreened. The other part was keeping all the angles matching between acting and virtual set backgrounds. Keeping everything pure High Definition from start to finish was challenging as the whole movie was done using limited computer resources available during HD's infancy! We also had to cartoonize the cast, which wasn't available in batch renderable software until a year after the initial cut.

LFF: What will you do differently when making your next feature?

KC: I always push the envelope, but part of that is increasing quality in image/sound, story continuity, acting, edit flow, budget constraint and allocation, and more. It's not about doing it differently as much as a continual growth and progression towards meeting Hollywood's set quality standards on budgets that they use for production's toilet paper.
It's most independent's dream to make the best movie with no budget, right??? Imagine what we could do WITH a budget!!!!!

LFF: If you could pass on one piece of advice to a novice film maker what would it be?

KC: Be paranoid to complete your art and maintain your own visions. (mostly for indie filmmaking, not large studio productions) Don't trust everyone with your project. A cast member could lose interest after signing on, a fight between actors could break out and they refuse to work together, or any number of problems and times where you rely on others to help. Unless you are unionized and working on a stronger budget that can support/handle dramas, keep as many aspects under your control as possible! I can't stress or say enough about this topic, but there's no time in this to do it justice. That's why I write, direct, edit, partially score, do visual effects....mostly myself!

LFF: What are your top 5 science fiction films of all time?

KC: Aliens, Star Wars episode III (despite some points), Fifth Element, Startrek II, Jason X.

LFF: Your favourite science fiction novel?

KC: Robot City.... it's a spin-off from the original I Robot novels. It's not edgy enough for theatrical, but I'd love to make it for Direct To Home Video.

LFF: What are your views on the current legal wrangling going on between Fox and Warner Bros over the distribution rights for Zack Snyder's Watchmen film?

KC: I only glanced at the controversy, but if 20th Century Fox had purchased rights to DC in the 80's...it would almost seem a shut case! Everyone involved should have been smart about it from the beginning and checked who owned what! Same as getting your cast/crew to sign proper waivers...you just do it!!! Hey...it keeps the giants at each other's throats and from attacking the little guy for a moment, right?

LFF: To the general public science-fiction is often looked on as something a little geeky, yet big budget science-fiction films are often incredibly successful. Why do you think this is?

KC: When you get cool actors to use cool gadgets with cool special effects and plenty of cool television and print promos tied into everything, the nerd factor goes out the door. We all use computers now, but before...it was strictly nerds and businesses. It's all about peoples' comfort levels and perceptions! Look at the Matrix... get rid of K.Reeves, the sunglasses, fancy clothes and unrealistic karate hype and you are left with a very bleak world that almost resembles a horror movie more than a sci-fi. The oracle belongs in horror genre more than sci-fi anyways...with all those predictions. It's all perception!

LFF: What is your favourite piece of science fiction technology in film or TV?

KC: Definitely the lightsaber as you can rob banks at night in 2 minutes! I wouldn't want to pass gas near a saber, though!

LFF: If money was no object and you could have any actor alive or dead to star in it, what film would you make?

KC: Christopher Walken! He's just badass! What he does with voice and attitude is phenomenal! I'd make any movie I could with him in it, but if I had to choose a role.... supernatural twin brothers, one evil and running half of a post-apocalyptic world, the other an outcast sorcerer gathering a team of powerful misfits to take him down. Cliche in many ways, but a good story and movie experience can be made out of it.

LFF: What was the first film you ever watched? Do you think that it has had any influence on your later work?

KC: You know, I've been watching soooo many movies with my folks as a kid that I don't even remember the first. I will say that Ghostbusters and Return of The Jedi were very important to me as a kid. Special and Visual effects are strong with me.

LFF: Star Wars v Star Trek?/span>

KC: If this were about who'd win, I would say Star Wars...only because the jedi and sith could hyperdrive directly to Earth and the federation, seduce and knock up all the women they could with their mind tricks, and with all the children being born, well...the federation would have to collapse.

LFF: If you were going to be killed by any movie villain or monster who or what would it be? What would your last words be?

KC: 20th Century Fox's Aliens..... I wouldn't have words, as I'd be the victim that gets the inner mouth through the skull!

LFF: If you were Supreme Overlord of the Earth what would your first decree be?

KC: Get me a venti cafe mocha and cancel all 90210 style television programming

LFF: Who would you thank in your Oscar acceptance speech?

KC: I would thank George Lucas for creating and pushing the envelope on great digital tools we all use, despite the competition and segregation that also spun off of it in instances such as Avid versus Adobe. Without his contributions, we'd be completely stuck without visual effects and less chances of independents showing off their talent. Also, science fiction would be more drab without his visions.

LFF: Where and when will we be able to see Salvaging Outer Space?

KC: For the moment, www.Createspace.com is home to DVD sales until Salvaging Outer Space gets picked up by distributors. We may just split rights globally and keep control, but we'll see.

LFF: What is your next film as a director going to be?

KC: It depends on people and money! If I don't get stronger industry or financial connections, it will be a tight science fiction flick that will mostly be photo-realistically done in computer with some chromakey live acting mixed in. There are 2 concepts going in separate directions, but feasible on micro-budget. I would like to be brought into a remake or sequel to low-budget horror or sci-fi of popular 80's titles, personally as a step.

LFF: What film are you most looking forward to seeing in 2009?

KC: I think the Terminator IV film or Transformers II. I love robots destroying robots and things like that! It's one thing to watch a person shoot another person, but to watch high tech things whip out lasers or huge machine guns....hand me some popcorn!

LFF: Thanks very much Kenny. Good luck with the film.

Check out my previous interviews with Neal Asher and Will Stotler and Marc Robert who are the creators behind the zombie movie, Able.

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7 Cut Moments in Cult Film

In Hollywoodland, that missing scene can make the difference between PG13 and R. Between classic and hysteric...

Article by Martin Anderson @ Den of Geeks.

Having reviewed the excellent new Wings Of Desire special edition yesterday, I was shocked to find that Wim Wenders’ classic and esoteric tale of angels in Berlin was at one point set to end with a pie fight. All the footage – and I mean the footage from all four cameras covering the slapstick fight between Bruno Ganz, Otto Sander and Solveig Donmartin – is included in the 30 minutes of deleted scenes, and Wenders himself is offering a prize to whoever can edit it back into the film on Final Cut Pro (or whatever) most effectively.

Thank God, he recognises it was a mad end-of-shoot idea, and constitutes more the beginning of the wrap party for Wings Of Desire than the end of principal photography, but...blimey, he was close there, for a while.

It set me thinking of the other near-misses from cult film…

7: HOURS of incomprehensible shit - Fire Walks With Me (1992)
As a lover of Eraserhead, The Elephant Man and Dune, and a big respecter of Wild At Heart, Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks, I have to date the release of FWwM as the point where the last of David Lynch’s very useful anti-psychotics left his system. I hear that drugs can be stored in body fat and release their effects in later years, when the fat becomes metabolised for sustenance; therefore a rigorous diet must have kept ‘Out To Lunch’ Lynch balanced enough to make the delightful The Straight Story (1999), before getting utterly lost again in Mulholland Drive (1992).

Anyway, this is a director who makes legendarily lengthy cuts of his movies (see Dune below), and FWwM/Peaks fans are still clamouring for the missing three hours of Lynch’s cinematic outing for his Twin Peaks retinue. ?yhW

Maybe it’s an Alien 3 deal, where the restoration of essential footage will suddenly make sense of the whole thing. But if it takes three hours extra for that to happen, it does suggest a certain want of narrative economy.

6: Jessica and Logan pose for ice-sculpture – Logan’s Run (1976) My motives for wanting to see this, though not the purest, are mixed up with annoyance at how close this scene came to being in the movie. After Roscoe Lee Brown’s robot guardian ‘Box’ has welcomed our heroes to his ice-cave, but before he lets slip the fact that he has flash-frozen all the other ‘runners’ who came there looking for Sanctuary, the eccentric cyborg asks the stunning couple if they will pose nude for an ice-sculpture. Being good guests, they agree…

That scene was refused as too provocative for the rating that Logan’s Run was going for, but annoyingly it is rendered in the Marvel comics adaptation! Arghhh. So close.

Since I can’t really put Logan’s Run in twice, I’ll have to also mention the other legendarily missing scene, which is the bawdier original cut of Michael York and Jenny Agutter’s slightly-hilarious slow-motion escape from Rihcard Jordan through the ‘Love Shop’, which is basically a cross between Starbucks and a 70s orgy. Michael Anderson’s racier edit also fell victim to the MGM blue pencil, and the director admits on the commentary that the bowdlerised version familiar to audiences is only a shadow of it.

5: Kurt Russell gets the all-clear – The Thing (1982)
John Carpenter makes clear in the extras on The Thing (R1 release) DVD that Universal wanted coverage of a happier ending to his nihilistic cult shocker. Being a practical man and not committed to using it, Carpenter quickly threw together a set-up at the end of shooting where Kurt Russell is in a hospital, having been recovered from the arctic pyrotechnics that now close the movie, and being given a test that proves he is not infected. Russell gives a sigh of relief and that’s it.

I don’t know if the test given is the rather dramatic ‘hot metal’ one that proved a hallmark of the film, but Carpenter’s decision not to include this scene in the otherwise very comprehensive extras on the laserdisc/DVD Thing was the right one, in my opinion. This was not something I needed to see, and it was never part of the reality of the film. Apparently the scene was cut into the movie at certain test screenings; since it proved to have no discernible effect on general audience reaction, Carpenter was allowed to keep the finale bleak and bereft of comfort.

4: James Remar as Hicks – Aliens (1986) Yup, Dexter’s dead dad shot a full two weeks on James Cameron’s sci-fi horror classic as Ripley’s squeeze before being replaced by stalwart Cameronite Michael Biehn. Reports at the time cited a family emergency, though Remar is said to have since admitted that it was due to his excessive drug-use at the time. In the same period Cameron was forced to replace an obstreperous director of photography, and was as plagued by British working practises as LV426 was by xenomorphs, legendarily having to stop work every three minutes for a round of bad sandwiches and greasy tea.

One shot of Remar’s work as Hicks remains in Aliens – as the camera pans down from the alien-encrusted walls to the marines approaching the reactor core, the Hicks walking away from shot is Remar. This was an early SFX shot using a hanging miniature that had just been trashed, and would have been prohibitively expensive to re-shoot. Luckily Remar looks away from camera as soon as it lights on him, and there’s really no telling anyway who is who with all that grungy military get-up.

3: Ripley slapped by Lambert – Alien (1979)
This minor deep-space cat-fight has actually surfaced in recent years, but was quite a curiosity until the Quadrilogy edition; the more so because, as with the Logan’s Run ‘box sculpture’ (see above), the scene was removed after the film had been turned into a graphic novel. So again, this was one that I got to see only in comic form.

Outraged that cool-as-ice Ripley wouldn’t let Dallas and her back on board with the infected Kane (a pretty fucking wise move foiled by the traitormatic Ash), Veronica Cartwright’s character lays into Ripley as soon as she arrives at the infirmary to see how Kane is getting on, but Parker (Yaphet Kotto) quickly intervenes.

Ridley Scott recounts on one of his several commentaries for various versions of Alien that he wasn’t getting the energy and conviction out of the conflict, and told Cartwright to really ‘go for it’ with the slap. Used to the feints, Weaver burst into tears when taking the full force of the blow and remonstrated with herself – so she recounts in Quadrilogy – because Ripley ‘would never have cried’.

Since I can’t mention Alien twice, I will also add that I would love to see more of John Finch’s takes as Kane, before John Hurt was called in to replace the very ill actor, who was subsequently diagnosed with diabetes. That said, the one shot of Finch in the role on the bridge of the Nostromo, which is available on the Quadrilogy edition, finds the actor clearly on the point of passing out. As this was one of his first shots for the film, there may be no more of Finch to see in the role.

2: The ‘star child’ blows up Earth’s nuclear arsenal – 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) The evolved Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) was originally to not merely go into orbit and gaze fawn-like at the camera but detonate the entire arsenal of Earth’s nuclear weapons. It would have been a ‘nuking from orbit’ that predated Aliens by nearly twenty years, and Kubrick is said to have avoided the idea ultimately because of its similarity to the conclusion of Doctor Strangelove. Since such an aggressive act would possibly mean the end of all life on Earth, this alternate ending paints 2001 in a shockingly different light…

Having spent millions of years growing a civilised race from a bunch of vegetarian monkeys, why punish the very war-like behaviour that you instilled in them yourself with your big black monoliths at the dawn of time? All the space-borne remnants of the human race were clearly dependent on Earth and a long way from any real colonisation, so in effect it would have been kaput for mankind. Perhaps the Star Child was intending to jettison Earth and its people like a second-stage rocket, and continue a new and better race via parthenogenesis?

Apparently special effects for the nuclear wipe-out were actually done – though not finished – by Douglas Trumbull. Again, as with Kurt’s miraculous escape in The Thing (see above), I’m not sure I ever want to really see it…

1: The ‘Little maker’ – Dune (1984) This was for a long time a mystery to all but those who watched the ‘Alan Smithee’ version on network TV in the 1980s, which – in a typical ‘network-cut’ deal with the devil – traded off censorious snips for extended and non-controversial footage that never made it into the cinematic version. One of those cut scenes was an elaborate ritual where the Fremen show Paul how spice is extracted from the baby worms. It’s pretty disgusting, actually, and is found or found absent in various of the five known versions of Dune, but the Smithee abomination – a bloat-out at 177 minutes – definitely has it, and that has been released on DVD after many years of curiosity by fans.

In a side-note, an early script treatment of the adaptation, by Rudolph Wurlitzer (a writer on Sam Peckinpah´s Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid) would have had the fugitive Paul Atreides and his Bene Gesserit mum, the Lady Jessica, in an incestuous tryst after the death of husband/father Duke Leto. Ridley Scott was behind the idea during his involvement on the project before David Lynch was invited to the helm, and the oedipal strand was then firmly nixed. Ten years later, Lynch would probably have done it…

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