| South Korean singer gains followers on Twitter By 2010-10-13T15:22:43ZSEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A popular South Korean singer has become a hit on Twitter, with his fans bombarding the site with postings.... hosted.ap.org |
The greatest films of all time: Crime Controversially, the cinema has always made criminals look cool. The big screen loves bad guys and, to modify Blake's description of Milton, has often been of the devil's party, while knowing it perfectly well. Yet crime and transgression are the stuff of drama and real life, too. Howard Hawks's Scarface in 1932 gave us Paul Muni's criminal sociopath Tony Camonte, brilliantly reinvented by Brian De Palma in 1983 with Al Pacino in the lead role.The gangster genre showed how criminal networks operated inside their own fiercely moral codes and stood in direct opposition to courtroom dramas such as Twelve Angry Men, with its formal endorsement of the letter of the law. The noir genre of the 40s and 50s conversely found criminality to reside not in dynastic cultures or parodic societal norms but in individual acts of cynicism, obsession and desperation.Crime becomes lighter with the caper genre, such as The Italian Job, whereas the Ealing comedies found the bitterest black comedy in murder and a queasy celebration of the entrepreneurial daring in crime.CrimePeter Bradshawguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Will Ridley Scott's Alien prequel make a groundbreaking scene? The 'Brokeback Alien' rumours couldn't get any more off the planet. But so what? As long as the film enters new territoryYou know it's been a slow news week when pretty much the most enticing morsel out there is the bizarre leak (or possibly hoax) that Ridley Scott's forthcoming Alien prequel may centre on two male humans forced into sexual intercourse by their extra terrestrial overlords.Would you like a little time to take that in? Done? Okay, we'll continue. The main reason I'm picking up London Insider's report on the Australian What's Playing site, is that studio Fox appears to have asked for it to be removed, though not before the story had spread like wildfire across the blogosphere. I can't see why anyone would have bothered to scotch what sounds like an extremely silly rumour on a relatively obscure site unless it were ... well, true.We've known for some time, courtesy of Scott himself, that the new film, which takes place 30 years prior to the events of 1979's Alien, will most likely feature a race of aliens with connections to the "space jockey" created by HR Giger and seen in the early part of the original movie when the crew of the Nostromo are investigating the planetoid. What's Playing reports (or reported) that these extra terrestrials, now known as "growers" are nomadic types who travel from one planet to another, terraforming it for their own purposes (which may well hint at the origin of the murderous xenomorphs). In the film, they encounter two male human slave farmers and use a form of mind control on them to force them to have sex. The suggestion is that the growers want their captives to procreate, but have rather got the wrong idea, being themselves a single sex species.The film also reportedly features a separate human space crew, including a butch black woman named Oliver and another female character named Trucks. This sounds rather more like (though perhaps too much like) the traditional Alien universe, with echoes of Jenette Goldstein's fabulous Vasquez from James Cameron's Aliens. Gemma Arterton was apparently up for the Trucks role.Were what is rather childishly being termed the "Brokeback Alien" scene to actually make it on to camera, it might go down as one of the most excruciating celluloid moments since the "squeal like a piggy" segue from 1972's Deliverance. It would certainly mark the film out as a rather different beast from the awful Aliens vs Predator films, if only because those movies resolutely failed to raise any eyebrows whatsoever. And one has a feeling it would be the kind of moment that made the film a genuine talking point, whether for positive or negative reasons.Having apparently read the screenplay by Jon Spaihts and Lost's Damon Lindelof, London Insider described it as hard science fiction meets psychological drama with romance. Make of that what you will, given what you've just read, but it all sounds way out of the leftfield. I'm thinking this could go two ways: we might get something akin to Jean-Pierre Jeunet's misjudged attempt to plunge the series into even weirder territory with all those messed up Ripleys and the half-xenomorph-half-human "newborn" in Alien: Resurrection. Alternately, such a move might manage to pull off the previously impossible feat of topping the chestburster birthing scene from the first film 窶 and all without a xenomorph in sight (thought they are bound to turn up at some point).I mentioned on this blog last week that it would be a pity if Scott's film went the same way as Robert Rodriguez's recent Predators and indulged itself by referring constantly to previous movies in the series. The above storyline does at least suggest something rather more original, and a move into more "difficult" territory, which would have to be a positive move. Seriously, who wants to see anything approaching a "safe" Ridley Scott Alien prequel, 30 years on, given the film-maker's tendency in recent years to churn out technically brilliant but rather workmanlike fare?So how else could the film avoid falling into shallow retread territory? Well, for a start, no one should be trying to replace Sigourney Weaver's Ripley. One of the reasons the first film worked so well is that no one knew which character was going to end up as the lead, and which were going to cop it: if Scott's film features a strong female role, everyone is going to assume that she'll make it until the end. And that is precisely why the screenwriters ought to kill her off about half-way through, leaving the audience unbalanced and in unfamiliar territory.Of course, that's unlikely to happen, and many would argue that an Alien film without an iconic female role would be a disservice to a series whose decision to cast a woman as the action lead was a major landmark in Hollywood history. Nevertheless, if we really are about to see "Brokeback Alien", I'd venture all bets are off.Ridley ScottSigourney WeaverScience fiction and fantasyHorrorBen Childguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Elton: I'm too old for electronica Elton John says he is 窶徼oo old窶 to change his music. feeds.breakingnews.ie |
DreamWorks' 3-D Megamind: That's Incredibles! You get the feeling that Megamind was made for, and possibly by, really smart six-year-olds. Nothing wrong with that feedproxy.google.com |