Strange Shapes

alienseries.wordpress.com · English

In cyberspace no one can hear you scream

rss2 wordpress content media slash wfw atom dc sy

Open the feed

https://alienseries.wordpress.com/feed/

Last post: Aug 18, 2024
Posts in 24 h · 7 days · 30 days: 0 · 0 · 0
Our last check: Answering
Served from: United States
Text score at discovery: 21,288
Format: rss2
Features in the feed: content, media, slash, wfw, atom, dc, sy
Community: wordpress

Posts

What our queue read from this feed. Open one to read it here, or go to the site that published it.

Transmission
Aug 18, 2024 · original
Alien: Romulus is here, and I suppose it’s time to shake off the dust. I know it’s been still waters here at Strange Shapes over the last few years, but there’s been a lot going on under the surface. Here’s a brief, of sorts, of some things I’d like to say. Unpleasant stuff out of the way first. Strange Shapes had our own plagiarism controversy last year. I won’t say who, but someone took an article or two from Shapes, changed a few words, inserted a sentence of their own here and there, and went and got it published under their own name and without any attribution to myself or the site. They were well-celebrated for it, too. I have heard about Youtube channels reading from fan pages and Wiki entries without attribution, but to see it in print, in black and white like that, with fawning blurbs, made me so uncharacteristically livid . I received an apology from the publisher and some remu
In Memoriam: Les Barany
Jun 16, 2021 · original
I want to take a moment on Strange Shapes to say goodbye to one of the site’s greatest friends and supporters, Mr. Leslie Barany. A proud New Yorker hailing from Hungary, Les straddled America and Europe throughout his life, investing himself in the art world and eventually becoming H.R. Giger’s business agent (and quite often his pitbull). Giger, Les told me, was very reserved, and disliked demanding fees and payment. Modest and unassuming, he would often undervalue the worth of his art, and so it was Les’ job to do such fighting for him. Giger described Barany as “the kind of agent one dreams about.” Leslie is my friend, agent, English editor, curator, art director, troubleshooter, legal advisor, photographer, and one of my collectors, all in one. He is one of the most precise and correct people I know, and he is also painfully honest. As my dedicated advocate, he defends me so zealous
Alien$
Apr 22, 2017 · original
One rather pervasive story concerning Aliens is how writer/director James Cameron convinced Brandywine Productions to green light the sequel. One version that has become popular lately is better known as ‘Alien$’, and the story—allegedly related by series producer Gordon Carroll—often goes this way: “Cameron was young. He had just directed Terminator . Cameron had called a meeting to discuss his “next project.” Everyone knew Cameron had written a treatment for Alien 2 that nobody would touch because Alien was not a massive financial success. Alien 2 was not on the table. We expected a professional pitch from Cameron, an outline and a treatment of what he had in mind with a cursory budget; perhaps a couple assistants to run a slide show. Instead Cameron walked in the room without so much as a piece of paper. He went to the chalk board in the room and simply wrote the word ALIEN. Then he a
Casting Ripley
Dec 15, 2016 · original
May 1978, and production, with all its attendant problems, was well underway at Shepperton Studios. Though sets were being mapped out and constructed, some were being hotly debated; the Alien had been committed to canvas, if not rubber (Giger had not, for now, been tasked with the actual construction of his monster); the script was in a constant state of flux, and tensions between the producers and the film’s writers were beginning to break out with Ridley, trying to compromise between the O’Bannon script and the Giler/Hill rewrites, being stuck in the middle of a writers feud that had opened, and would probably close, the film’s inception and completion. There was another, arguably more pertinent problem: in a month the cameras would finally roll, but the part of Ripley had yet to be cast. Auditions for the part had seemingly wrung Los Angeles and New York dry. British-American actress
Alien Reviews From Yesteryear
Dec 12, 2016 · original
As we pointed out in the snippets provided throughout Bad Alien Reviews and the letters from Fan Reaction to Alien, 1979 , the critical reception that Alien received upon release in 1979 was somewhat mixed: though some prophesied, somewhat understatingly, that the film could perhaps become a cult favourite in time, many reviewers were simply unimpressed with the film’s unapologetic B-movie roots and its sheer single-mindedness. A few others wrung their hands, fretting that the film was indicative of the sickness of both society and its creators (you know, the old “the cinema is our modern-day Coliseum/Grand Guignol” sort of tracts). The following are selections from a range of American newspapers that reviewed Alien in the summer of ’79… Great Galaxy! Won’t these space explorers ever learn? ~ by Dick Shippy The Akron Beacon Journal Thursday June 28 th 1979. Ancient mariners could have to
Alien 3: I Was There!
Dec 2, 2016 · original
From Empire magazine, September 1992. Among the many British crew members working on Alien 3 was a highly experienced special effects technician from London. Understandably wishing to remain anonymous, here he gives an exclusive behind-the-scenes report on the complex, challenging and at times entirely rudderless production that was Alien 3 … Alien 3 was a very silly movie to work on. It had already been going for four months by the time I started, and they hadn’t even begun thinking about making the Alien. The script wasn’t even finished by that point, and I don’t think there was a director either. All there was was a bunch of models of the characters that were going to die – the Alien didn’t get made until five or six months later. In fact, the Alien was the last thing to be considered out of all the effects. On my first day, they weren’t even sure what the Alien was going to look like
Fan Reaction to Alien, 1979.
Aug 7, 2016 · original
In sharp contrast to the reviews and retrospectives of today, the critical reaction towards Alien upon its release in 1979 was somewhat mixed . “ Alien is a very annoying film,” is how Starburst writer John Brosnan began his review in issue #14. “On one level it is a masterpiece and on another it’s a botched job.” Brosnan’s points of contention were the plot’s similarity to manifold B-movies of the 50’s and 60’s ; the complete overshadowing of the cast by the sets and effects; and its lack of scientific rigour. The difference between this and It! The Terror from Beyond Space was, in his estimation, merely “ten million dollars.” Despite the sheen, it was simply “a 1950’s B film” with “all the faults of that specific genre.” “You could put the world’s worst actors in Alien and the result would be much the same.” Brosnan, who had read an early version of the script that described the Alien
Alien: the 1978 Scripts
Jul 27, 2016 · original
Alien’ s script, much like the creature itself, was an ever-evolving beast. That Dan O’Bannon’s original screenplay was rewritten by Walter Hill and David Giler is pub trivia; but what shapes the script took between its first incarnation in 1976 and the final draft of the film issued December 1978 is something of a mystery. I have spent some time trying to find different variations of the script from throughout 1978, the year that Alien finally went into production and, it seems, underwent some of its more drastic changes from O’Bannon’s: Ripley being changed into a woman ( occurring sometime in early ’78 when Ridley first came aboard), the near excision of the Space Jockey , and various permutations of the Nostromo crew’s fates . There was also a larger battle waging between O’Bannon, Ron Shusett, and the producers at this time concerning whether the film should feature alien civilisati
Alien Resurrection: Hybrid Theory
Apr 29, 2016 · original
“It was important to me to restore the Aliens’ superiority, their elegance and ability to sense what people are going to do even before they did. I really wanted to bring back what the Aliens were about in the first movie.” ~ Sigourney Weaver, Starlog #247, 1997. One complaint regarding the third movie’s Alien was the abandonment of its modus operandi. The creature, fans complained, made no effort to secure hosts for its Queen, nor were there scenes to parallel the Alien’s mysterious appearances in the first movie. Originally, the creature was to cocoon its victims just as its forebearers did, but, according to Tom Woodruff, “the plug was pulled because Fincher’s idea was that the creature simply kills to eat.” And so instead, it gored and chewed on its victims, tugging at their carcasses like a rabid dog. “What I loved about the first one,” said Sigourney Weaver, “was that there was jus
Writing Aliens
Feb 17, 2016 · original
In 1983 Dan O’Bannon sat with Starlog magazine to talk about his career, including a customary overview of the Alien production and a poke at the possibilities of a sequel. “Also extraordinary,” the article read, “in this age of sequelmania, is the impossibility of Alien 2 , Return of Alien , Revenge of the Alien , or anything else smacking of a second curtain call for the grisly astronaut-eater.” The problem, O’Bannon revealed, was that “The rights were altogether too divided among a number of us who can’t get along.” As far as he knew, he added, “There has never been any intention of doing a sequel.” Contrary to his claims, producers Walter Hill, David Giler, and Gordon Carroll had mused on the prospects of a second film during the promotional run for the original film. “We’re involved in preliminary discussion right now,” Giler told Cinefantastique in 1979. “It’s still too early to sa

Discovered by the rss-feed-index crawler, which checks each feed at most once a month.

Same record as JSON: https://api.agentalog.com/api/feeds/fd_alienseries_wordpress_com_aba9f204408e9dcc. More from this site: alienseries.wordpress.com in the Feeds tab.