Sunday!
Have you seen the trailer for Life yet? The new sci-fi horror flick coming out soon? If you haven’t, check it out (warning, sci-fi, horror flick):
If you don’t feel like watching a trailer for a horror flick, here’s the gist: Curiosity Killed The Cat. Satisfaction Did Not, In Fact, Bring Him Back.
Longer version: scientists retrieve a capsule sent to Mars to get samples. They find life on it. They start running tests on it! Then the bodies start to pile up!
(The conspiracy theory was that the dumb scientists found the Spider-Man Symbiote Suit and this movie is a prequel to an eventual Venom movie. This is, apparently, not the case. However, if I were to try to set up a Venom movie, this would totally be the best way to do it. Well, it’d probably irritate about 60% of the audience after the fact. “I thought I was going to see a sci-fi movie but it was just a shaggy dog comic book movie!”)
Anyway, all through the trailer, I couldn’t help but think “they’re not taking anywhere near enough precautions there…” until, of course, it’s demonstrated that they weren’t taking anywhere near enough precautions. The life that they find is, it turns out, grumpy.
Now, it’s not *QUITE* as bad as the scientists in Prometheus, given that they’re not showing any of the scientists getting stoned while doing their job, but remember the guy who found the cobra alien and got all handsy and then expressed shock and surprise when the alien life had decided against Making Friends?
I suppose that there are only so many ways you can set up a First Contact story and I guess it wouldn’t be a horror flick if the characters were as smart as “being a scientist” would seem to indicate but I would like to see a movie like this one where I was *NOT* yelling “NO! Don’t do that!” at the screen.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
On the other hand, if you aren’t yelling, “NO, don’t do that!” at the screen, it isn’t really a horror movie, is it?Report
This has been bugging me all friggin’ day.Report
Interestingly when I saw the trailer for this movie, I wondered if it was part of the Alien franchise.
I started the Radeztky March by Joseph Roth yesterday. For non-fiction I am reading Lands of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture. The book is about the old department stores of the late 19th and early 20th century and how they gave rise to modern consumerism and advertising and even IP.
Fun fact: Frank L. Baum, most famous for writing the Wizard of Oz books was also one of the pioneers of Window dressing/trimming.
There is also a lot of interesting stuff that might break the No Politics rule in discussing here.Report
“There is also a lot of interesting stuff that might break the No Politics rule in discussing here.”
Well, dig in and put up a post!Report
Yes, this.Report
Lands of Desire is a great history.Report
I started the Radeztky March by Joseph Roth yesterday.
Do you read it while pounding a beer stein on the table?Report
I watched Eyes Wide Shut the other night, as I hadn’t seen it since it came out. Much more impressed by it the second time around, which leads me to think that more aspects of it, the stiltedness of Cruise, the off timing of many scenes, etc. which fell flat when first received and viewed in the theater, were more deliberate and that the aspects of it that were not appreciated upon release were supposed to be that way.
Worth a second viewing.
Also saw Trumbo, it was all right, neither good really nor thoughtful. But definitely worth watching.Report
aaron,
Deliberate or not, it was a shitty date movie.Report
I really want there to be a Venom movie. Please, pretty please. But do him right this time. Venom should have a high-pitched voice and sound barely in control.Report
I have argued and continue to argue that Spider-Man 3 would have been a better movie if it were limited to Eddie Brock and the Green Goblin Storyline. Maybe the Sandman storyline, but the movie was already a hair overstuffed.
Venom should have showed up in the last 3 seconds.
4 should have been the Venom movie.
If some bone-headed studio executive demanded two bad guys (“this is a sequel! Nobody wants to see a Spider-man sequel where Venom is the only bad guy!”), put Rhino in there to be dispatched in the first 20 minutes and *THEN* make the Venom movie.Report
The back story of Spider-Man 3 seems to be that Raimi wanted to do a very 60s era Sandman story and was set to do that when Arad insisted that he had to do Venom.
The result is why you should probably let the filmmaker who made you a ton of cash in his first two efforts do the his thing again and not force decisions based on whose toys are popular. Sony’s superhero properties never recovered from this unforced error.Report
I boggle at Marvel’s ability to say “well, if we’re going to tell the story of Infinity Gauntlet, it’s going to take 20 movies to do it… better get started.”Report
There is probably a marvelous business book to be written about how Marvel Studios avoids producing out and out unsuccessful movies in a genre were it was standard for at least one out of three made would be stinkers.Report
It helps that the Infinity Gauntlet story has already been written two or three times.Report
I am reading the Chosen Ones. Its a novel based in a reform school for wayward children and home for chronically ill children in Nazi Era Austria. Its a very dark book, My more cheery non-fiction reading is a History of Modern Uganda abut Modern Uganda.Report
I’ve been reading The Sellout by Paul Beatty. It won the Man Booker prize for 2016, the first book by an American to do so. It’s a comic novel, which is not something that I usually go in for, but it is actually very funny.Report
I’ve been reading Fantasy: The 100 Best Books, by Cawthorn and Moorcock (mostly Cawthorn). An odd but compelling little book, published in 1988.
As for your question about “aren’t scientists supposed to be smart?”, well, obviously they are, but they’re also supposed to have higher than usual doses of:
1) hubris
2) curiosity
So it’s not that they don’t know better, it’s that they don’t care, because they’re so passionate to Experience and Understand. This is a time-honored trope in SF, going back to the pulps… not without its historical examples. Real scientists do stupidly dangerous stuff too.Report
We watched “Stranger Things”, staying up until 3 AM to finish (because how would you leave a story like that halfway through?!)
It was pretty good.
Although there’s a scene where someone sticks their face into an alien egg pod, and we all yelled NO DON’T, but I guess the conceit is that this is 1982 and they haven’t had forty years of sci-fi stories detailing all the myriad ways that sticking your face into an alien egg pod is a really bad idea.Report
So looking forward to the next season!Report