This site has been pushing the upcoming alien invasion film, Battle: Los Angeles since the first trailer started coming out several months ago. Sony Pictures has just released the latest one and this Super Bowl tv spot is shorter than the usual trailers, but it definitely shows the potential for this film’s awesomeness.
It pretty much uses some of the same footage from the previous trailers, but shows new ones of the soldiers’ reaction to the initial stages of the invasion and how they’ll be the one’s to have to fight the big fight.
Super Bowl XLV hasn’t even started and the very first summer blockbuster tv spot has already been released by its producers. While it still hasn’t premiered on tv it has already aired on the internet as Jon Favreau and crew continues to build up the hype the film got from its panel at 2010’s San Diego Comic-Con.
The tv spot that will air during the game is only half a minute long, but during that small time frame we see a lot more action with clear glimpses of the alien machines/spacecrafts that will be doing some abducting and probing in the Old West.
If this film end ups being as fun as the original Men In Black then I’m there. But part of me fears that it could turn out to be something like Wild, Wild West which would definitely make it a major fail. Here’s to hoping it’s more like the former and not the latter when it comes out on July 29, 2011.
Night of the Comet took advantage of the return of Halley’s Comet hype which ran through nation and pretty much most of the world throughout most of 1984 and into 1985. Hollywood being the opportunist industry that it was (and still is) were quick to produce and release a movie about the return of Halley’s Comet over the planet as soon as possible. The 1980’s was a good decade for the low to mid-budgeted horror and sci-fi movies which had a quick death at the box-office but which gained success and cult status in the many displays racks of the tens of thousands of video rental places. 1984’s Night of the Comet was one of these films and it typifies the cheesiness that was 1980’s scifi horror.
The film opens up with everyone partying the arrival of Halley’s Comet which could be seen in the night sky every 75-76 years. This time around the planet will pass through the comet’s tail which has only happened once and that was 65 million years in the past. People are out on the streets as night falls celebrating the Comet’s arrival and we meet two of the main characters in the film in the form of Regina (80’s genre icon Catherine Mary Stewart) and Samantha (Kelli Maroney). Two sisters who truly epitomizes the mall and valley culture of 1980’s Southern California, Regina and Samantha are not enjoying the night of the comet as Regina ends up working the night shift at the local theater she works at and Samantha is stuck at home with her stepmother and all the partygoers attending her stepmom’s party. In the span of a few sequences both Regina and Samantha end up locking themselves up somewhere quiet and safe to get away from the party going on around them.
While they stew in their own little, steel-lined hideaways the comet makes its pass over the planet with everyone who can see looking up to take a peek of the returning comet. What happens next sets up the rest of the movie. The comet seem to have turned anyone not protected behind heavy steel structures into red dust and those only half-protected end up turning into zombie-like creatures. Luckily for the two sisters they were inside such heavy steel structures when the comet did its pass over and were well-protected. The rest of the movie deals with Regina and Samantha dealing with the possibility that they may be the last people on the planet (though this soon get shotdown with the arrival of Commander Chakotay of Star Trek Voyager…I mean Robert Beltran) and trying to keep themselves from being eaten by the zombie survivors and being tested upon by shady, secret government scientists.
Night of the Comet won’t win any awards even from horror and science-fiction groups, but it will entertain to a point. For those who grew up during the 80’s the movie will bring back fond, if painful memories of just how cheesy that decade was in terms of pop culture. Catherine Mary Stewart as Regina would be seen in more cheesy horror flicks of the era. In fact, she pretty much became the PG-13 version of 80’s Scream Queen Linnea Quigley. Where Ms. Quigley wasn’t against gratuitious nudity and sex in the movies she was in, Ms. Stewart was very chaste and very girl next door in her roles.
Would I recommend this movie to people? Yes, I would but buying the dvd might be more for the hardcore horror and scifi completist since one can easily see Night of the Comet on regular and cable TV. In the end, the movie is a fun romp back through time to a weird and different era. The movie is not great, but it’s not bad either.
It looks like while vampires and zombies may be battling it out as the “monster of the moment” the past couple of years there’s an oldie quietly sneaking up behind them to try and take up the general public’s attention.
The first shot was a little film from South Africa called District 9. I think more than a few people saw that little film. Then last year we had a film from two special-effects brothers called Skyline. That particular shot wasn’t as good as the previous title mentioned. In fact, it was godawful though not without it’s perverse entertainment value one gets from watching a very awful film that still manages to entertain (though probably not in the way it’s creators intended to).
In less than a couple of months a film called Battle: Los Angeles will hit the bigscreen and will hopefully be a tad better than the similar plotted Skyline. This one has another South African directing it so that may be a good thing.
Coming this June is a tv series that also follows a similar theme of “alien invasion” with the DreamWorks Television series Falling Skies from producer Steven Spielberg and screeenwriter Robert Rodat. The show will premiere on TNT and stars Noah Wylie, Moon Bloodgood, Will Patton and Dale Dye. From what brief snippets of information that has been released about it the show looks to be similar in tone to Spielberg’s own War of the Worlds where it’s about the human armed resistance trying to retake their cities and the planet back from the alien invaders.
It definitely seems to be a very ambitious show and one that hopefully has a much leaner and efficient take on the alien invasion story than the current remake of V: The Series on ABC. That one had many hoping for a sci-fi to make a great return to network tv and instead we got aliens meets True Blood.
Here’s to hoping Falling Skies doesn’t have aliens wanting to have sex with humans and instead aliens just wanting to kill and/or eat humans instead. I think that would make for a much better show.
The Last Starfighter was a nice little sci-fi action movie which was revolutionary when it was released due to it’s use of an early version of CGI-effects. For 1984, the special-effects was quite new and showed just what was possible in the years to come.
The film itself was a fun and simple sci-fi actioner which owes a lot to the arcade shooters which were popular during the 80’s. Even the main plotline of the film was pretty much about a video game sent by a benevolent space-faring Rylan Star League looking to find a few good Starfighters to save their federation from the danger that was Zur and the Ko-Dan Armada. Lance Guest plays Alex Rogan whose only past-time at the trailer-park, where he lives with his mother and younger brother, is his girlfriend Maggie Gordon (played by 80’s genre favorite Catherine Mary Stewart) and constantly playing a video game called The Last Starfighter. Alex’s expert skills in beating the game brings about a new wrinkle in his hum-drum life which seems to be going nowhere. A seeming con-man of a salesman by the name of Centauri (played with gusto and energy by Robert Preston) comes out of nowhere and gives him an offer and opportunity that is out of this world.
The rest of the film brings about Alex’s reluctance to join the Star League as a Starfighter and pilot of the Gunstar fighter. He thinks it’s all a mistake and that he wasn’t signing up for some sort of intergalactic war that may just kill him. Like most action movies Alex will have an epiphany of what his role and destiny must be and, with some reluctance, finally takes the challenge by the controls and goes off to fight Zur and the Ko-Dan Armada with his lone Gunstar and his trusty navigator and all-around lizardman mentor, Grigg (played with equal parts seriousness and fun by Dan O’Herlihy).
For those like me who grew up during the 80’s and enjoyed watching these simple but fun sci-fi films The Last Starfighter was quite the blast from the past which still delights and entertains despite the corny dialogue and cheesy effects. The CGI-effects of the Gunstar and the Ko-Dan Armada looks dated but I still can’t take my eyes off the screen whenever these early looking CG effects come on. The acting is pretty standard B-movie quality with everyone seeming to have fun with the premise and giving it their all. There’s nothing to write the Academy about but in the end the performances do just enough to make the audience like the characters.
The Last Starfighter was quite the underrated scifi action film which should’ve done better than it did when it first came out. It’s since gained a cult following on video and always a welcome sight whenever it comes on cable. The film might seem dated compared to the super advanced CGI-effects laden blockbusters we have now but it still entertains the people who grew up watching it as kids and who have grown up since.
There’s not much else I can say about this upcoming alien invasion film coming out on 3-11-2011. I shall be there on Day One to see it in all it’s big-screen glory. This third trailer show’s a bit more of the alien race doing the invading and the unit of U.S. Marines set to repel and fight them off. I will say that final scene in the trailer with what looked like a massive construct made out of the rubble of Los Angeles just whetted my appetite to see this film even more. Talk about a moneyshot.
Below are the two other official trailer released for Battle: Los Angeles.
The one game which I am willing to kill for to get my hands on the moment it comes out in time for the 2011 holidays is from video game developer BioWare. BioWare created a scifi-rpg franchise four years ago which has consumed my life everytime a new one in the series comes out. First there was Mass Effect then just this past January was it’s bigger follow-up Mass Effect 2. It looks like Mass Effect 3 will once again consume my time and life in the end of 2011.
From the look of the trailer the foreboding scenes in the end of the last game will culminate in the extra-galactic terror machines called “The Reapers” heading for Earth to once and for all stop the race who spawned the one man who dared challenge it’s millenia-long cyclical harvesting of all organic life from the galaxy. The fact that I am that human who stops them has no bearing on just how awesome this game franchise has been.
It will be the final game in this series as announced by BioWare, but I won’t be surprised if the universe created by this franchise continues on using a different name with a new set of heroes and villains. In the end, this game and any that follow it up will have one thing in common. A galaxy to save, a game as close to cinematic as we’ve ever seen and me as it’s savior.
In 2009, a small film from South Africa turned the film industry on its ears. Neil Blomkamp’s District 9 was a sci-fi film which took the well-traveled alien invasion subgenre and added a new twist to the whole thing. The invasion wasn’t malicious and the bad guys ended up being the puny humans themselves. The ending of that film mentioned something about a possible real invasion of the aliens who were being oppressed, but until Blomkamp and Peter Jackson decide on making a follow-up sequel then we’ll just have to settle for the sudden wave of alien invasion films which seem to be popping up out of nowhere the last couple months.
There’s the little-to-no budget film Monsters which dealt with the landing of large tentacled aliens in the Central American jungles and how the world has come to cope with the aftermath. This one was more of a character piece with the aliens themselves little-seen til the very end. But it definitely falls under the alien invasion genre.
Then there’s Skyline by The Strause Brothers which comes out November 12 and while it also has a very low-budget compared to epic alien invasion films in the genre the film looks to have some top-notch special-effects. The story and acting may not be up the par with the visuals but then Roland Emmerich’s Independence Day was the same and it made a ton.
While late to the party it looks like Battle: Los Angeles by filmmaker Jonathan Liebesman (another South African) may be the one to pull off not just being a dramatic piece, but a sci-fi war film and FX-heavy visuals. From what could be seen in the trailer it definitely has a look that some people has called Black Hawk Down meets Independence Day.
It stars Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, Bridget Moynihan and Michael Peña and is set for a 03-11-2011 release.
Day Three of the week-long horror-themed “Song of the Day” feature brings us one of the greatest pieces of film music ever composed. I’m talking about the score for John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing from Another World. The remake retains only the first two words of the original’s title, and that alone speaks volumes.
At first listen, one might mistake this music as being composed by John Carpenter himself—an accomplished film composer in his own right, known for scoring most of his own films. Its similarity to his iconic Halloween theme and even his earlier work on Assault on Precinct 13 makes the connection understandable. But one would be wrong to assume Carpenter had a hand in writing it. For the first time, Carpenter allowed someone else to compose the score, and for the task he selected none other than the Italian maestro Ennio Morricone.
By the time he collaborated with Carpenter on this sci-fi horror masterpiece, Morricone was already firmly established as one of the great masters of film composition. Audiences knew him best for his legendary work on Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti westerns” as well as numerous classics of Italian cinema. While Morricone’s full score for The Thing deserves a complete discussion of its own, I’ll focus on the one track that most powerfully captures the themes of horror, isolation, dread, and paranoia that make Carpenter’s film such a landmark: “Humanity (Part II).”
The piece opens with a heartbeat-like sequence that pulses steadily through most of its length. Strings layer on top of this rhythm, creating a mournful, dirge-like quality, while the bass thump lurks ominously just beneath the surface, as though danger is present but unseen. For much of its runtime, the music exudes a stark sense of emptiness, forcing the listener into the same suffocating isolation as the characters onscreen, stranded in the vast Arctic wasteland. The repetition and looping structure almost feel like a trap, with no release or resolution, mirroring the crew’s paranoia as suspicion and fear close in tighter than the snowstorms outside. Each cycle draws the listener deeper into a psychological cage, heightening the dread with its unrelenting stillness.
It isn’t until the final two minutes that the track breaks from its oppressive restraint. Here, Morricone channels Carpenter’s trademark minimalism with unsettling synthesizer tones, jagged and piercing against the steady backdrop. The music shifts from mournful to dissonant, almost alien, capturing the horrifying essence of the creature in its most grotesque form. This sharp intrusion is not just an auditory shock but a symbolic transformation—the moment when the lurking horror finally emerges from shadow into focus, confirming that the paranoia has been justified all along. It is this careful build, held back until the very end, that demonstrates Morricone’s mastery at fusing Carpenter’s sensibilities with his own, delivering a piece that is both restrained and devastatingly effective.
There’s a reason so many film aficionados cite Carpenter’s The Thing as one of their all-time favorites. Its reputation owes much to Carpenter’s skill as a filmmaker and editor, but Morricone’s score plays an equally crucial role in shaping the film’s atmosphere. “Humanity (Part II)” stands as one of the finest pieces of horror film music ever written.
I just happened to catch one of my favorite creature-feature films on cable this morning and I had forgotten just how much fun this film was and is to still watch. I am talking about 1990’s horror-comedy Tremors by director Ron Underwood (who would follow it up with the very successful and funny City Slickers a year later) and starring the comedic duo of Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward. I was still in high school when I saw this in the theaters and even then this film had me from the get-go.
Tremors is a throwback to all the Saturday matinee creature-features and monster mash films that were huge during the 50’s and through the 60’s. It’s plot was simple enough that even a little kid could keep up with what was going on. We had a small, rundown mining town in the middle of nowhere (it always happens to be one of those small desert or valley towns which dotted the landscape once the national interstate was completed) whose fortunes have seen better days, hell better decades from the looks of it. The town has its cast of characters with Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon’s roles of Earl and Val the two main leads. We even get long-time genre actor Victor Wong in a supporting role as the town’s only store owner and also it’s two-bit hustler always looking to find a new way to make a buck. One of the funniest roles goes to Michael Gross (the dad in the 80’s hit family show Family Ties) who, with Reba McEntire as his wife, play some crazy-ass survivalists who try fighting off the creatures of this feature the giant, underground worms the survivors have dubbed “Graboids” for their propensity to grab people and animals with prehensile tentacle like appendages which shoot out from their mouths.
No, Tremors wasn’t some live-action version of the ever popular hentai, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers of the film were subconsconsciously influenced by them. What the film ended up being was one of the funnier horror comedies which ended the 80’s and announced the 90’s. It was also one of the last few great non-CGI creature features to come out of Hollywood. The Graboids were definitely animatronic and rubber-suited props, but they moved and looked real that one didn’t question whether they were real or not. It would be these creatures who would end up the stars and highlight of this film (the ensemble cast a good second) and follow-up sequels would and could never live up to it. It didn’t help that the sequels ended up using too much CGI which just ruined the illusion built-up by the original.
So, if you ever feel bored and suddenly see that one of the many basic cable channels are showing this little horror-comedy gem from the 1990’s I recommend you watch it with snacks and drinks on hand. There are many ways to make one stop being bored by watching something on the “Tele” and I say Tremors is one of those ways.
Through the Shattered Lens 