Crazy 80's Project: Aliens

I'm surprised that more people haven't drawn parallels between Aliens and director James Cameron's most recent blockbuster Avatar. Besides obvious borrowed set pieces (the robotic machine both Ripley and the mad general in Avatar use for very different reasons), the two films share a common theme, albeit one that is filtered through different eras and ideologies. Avatar is a product of the Obama Era. Worthington and Weaver encounter aliens and learn to get along with them so they can co-exist as one while corporate blowhards are trying to exploit the aliens and their environment's resources for profit. Aliens, on the other hand, is a byproduct of the Reagan/Bush Sr. Era. Find yourself encountered by a strange race? Obliterate them. But, oh, don't forget to try to exploit the aliens for profit (I guess some things never change). Whatever you think of those ideologies, Aliens is still a kick-ass film. It's one of the few action films I can think of that has the ability to scare you shitless without becoming a full-blown horror film. Aliens also has a great sense of environment, namely the ability to draw you into its abandoned space station so that you feel like you're with Ripley and the gang every (terrifying) step of the way. Michael Biehn is surprisingly sexy, while Glamazon Sigourney Weaver steals the whole damn movie as Lt. Badass Ripley. She's quite possibly the smartest and ballsiest female action hero the genre has ever seen and puts many of our lame "action" heroes today to shame. If only Ryan Reynolds was half the man Signourey Weaver is in Aliens. A-

10 Best Actresses I'm Excited For, 10 Not So Much

With Nick Davis winding up his immaculate Best Actress Project with a profile of a Best Actress nominee every day for the past week and a half or so, I've become re-immersed in my own progress with the category. After watching Ship of Fools a couple of days ago (and I was fighting the whole way not to turn that piece of crap off), I am now down to 80 nominees left to see. Not too shabby, me thinks. Of course, there are a few films which are either obscure as hell in America (Marriage- Italian Style, The Constant Nymph), not available in any format besides the film (The Barker, The Trespasser) or outright banned because of copyright issues (The Blue Veil), but, for the most part, a lot of the remaining ladies shouldn't be too difficult to find. So, in order to commence this re-immersion, here are ten ladies I'm eagerly anticipating...

Diahann Carroll, Claudine I'm usually fascinated by stories about African American families struggling to overcome racism and a vicious cycle of poverty. Bonus points: Nick Davis is ecstatic about Carroll's work here.
Stockard Channing, Six Degrees of Separation I always enjoy Stockard Channing. Seriously one of the most underrated actresses around.
Joan Crawford, Sudden Fear Joan's last nomination. Apparently Oscar saved the best for last. I'm optimistic, but it will be hard to top Possessed.
Jessica Lange, Frances Lange plays a mad actress from the 1940's in a highly emotional and excessive way. Sign me up, sign me up!
Carrie Snodgress, Diary of a Mad Housewife I love a good film about a despondent, lonely housewife. Plus, the film was directed by Frank Perry (aka the man who brought us Faye Dunaway in Mommie Dearest).
Kim Stanley, Séance on a Wet Afternoon Director Bryan Forbes has been 2 for 2 with me in terms of Best Actress nominees he has directed (Caron in The L-Shaped Room, Edith Evans in The Whisperers). Can Stanley make it 3?
Meryl Streep, Ironweed I've heard this is one of Streep's more underrated efforts. Let's see if she can match the quiet hype.
Gloria Swanson, Sadie Thompson Completely fascinated by the 1932 version with Joan Crawford (one of her best performances ever). Interested in what Swanson will be able to do in this silent version.
Liv Ullmann, Face to Face According to many who have been fortunate enough to see it, this is Ullmann's best work. And that's truly saying something about the woman who gave us Persona, Cries and Whispers and Autumn Sonata. Criterion, release this shit soon, please.
Sigourney Weaver, Aliens LOVED her kick-ass Ripley in Alien. Apparently, she's even better here.

...and, on the flip side, here are ten ladies I'm gonna have to be tied down Clockwork Orange-style in order to get through:

Geneviève Bujold, Anne of the Thousand Days A studio-made historical epic from the mid-60's designed purely for Oscar consideration. Shoot me now.
Ava Gardner, Mogambo I've never been particularly fond of Gardner. Combined with Grace Kelly and post-Lombard Clark Gable in a John Ford film sounds like pure torture.
Jennifer Jones, Love Letters The epitome of an actress who slept her way to the top. All of her other nominations have been close to insufferable.
Sarah Miles, Ryan's Daughter A 3.5 hour David Lean epic that's not even as good as the middling The Bridge on the River Kwai. Oscar truly is a sadistic bastard sometimes.
Michelle Pfeiffer, Love Field Not a huge Pfeiffer fan and this sounds like Movie of the Week stuff to me.
Debbie Reynolds, The Unsinkable Molly Brown I normally adore Debbie Reynolds, but I've heard nothing but bad things about this one.
Janet Suzman, Nicholas and Alexandra See Bujold above.
Gene Tierney, Leave Her to Heaven I simply don't get the big deal about her. One man's acting goddess truly is another's vacant dummy.
Kathleen Turner, Peggy Sue Got Married I saw the first twenty minutes a few years ago and was hardly impressed. It's going to take a lot to get me to try this one again.
Loretta Young, Come to the Stable One of the worst Best Actress winners ever is back as a kind and gracious nun. Just...no.

Rants on Avatar

I'm in a bit of a "damned if I do, damned if I don't" situation concerning Avatar, director James Cameron's epic 3D action film currently burning up box office records, becoming in six short weeks one of the top grossing movies of all time. If you have been following my Twitter since Avatar's release, I have been talking non-stop trash about the film. From the first trailer, I thought the whole thing looked incredibly stupid, but when the "Avatar is changing movies as we know it" campaign started, I, for lack of a better word, lost my shit. This angered fans of the movie, I'm sure, but, consequently aligned me with those (admittedly few and far between) haters of the movie. This is not entirely surprising given my track record with blockbuster action films, but I digress. Now that I've finally seen the movie, my problem has now become how my reaction will align myself with everyone else. I didn't outright hate Avatar like I thought I would (my friend Sammi told me to keep an open mind and I did the best that I could) but there's no way my reaction will please the fans who may not be calling it the "greatest movie EVER OMG" but were still impressed by the film. Of all the times to end up in the middle of a discussion, it has to be with the most financially successful film of our time. Go figure.

I'm one of those old dinosaurs who truly believes that CGI and computer-related special effects have ruined the movies. Often times I find they are used simply for spectacle and, as a result, do nothing for me in enhancing my movie watching experience. I don't care if they just blew up the fucking Empire State Building--that doesn't mean the surrounding film is any good. Give me Godard shooting a film about Maoism in what looks like my parents' basement or Hepburn and Grant running around the New England countryside chasing a leopard any day of the week. With that being said, I must admit that I thought the 3D special effects in Avatar were nicely done. Rather than rely solely on stupid 3D movie tricks--you know, something randomly getting thrown at the screen just so the audience can go, "Whoa, 3D, man!"--the film subtly immerses us into this invented world of Pandora. You feel a part of the movie in ways I have not experienced before. You're not "there" per se, but it is a hell of a lot closer total immersion in a film world than any CGI fuckfest I have seen before.

As great and inventive as the special effects were, I cannot fully support Avatar because, no matter the film's excessive stylization and massive visuals, we have seen everything else in the film hundreds of times before. The film, numerous times, has been compared to Pocahontas but I actually thought it was closer to another Disney film: The Lion King. With the Na'vi's deep connection to nature and the other creatures who live with them, the odd African tribal music that punctuated the score and the finale, which might as well have had a chorus of Na'vis high-kicking a verse of 'Circle of Life,' I was expecting Simba to pop out eventually and help Jake Sully fight off the Army. While the script wasn't as atrocious as I had heard, I was still concerned that most of the characters were nothing but one-dimensional stereotypes, firmly on either side of good and evil and amped up to 11. The bad guys are so unstomachably bad, I could hardly stand the implausibility of some scenes. Aside from Sigourney Weaver as the no-bullshit, ballsy scientist, the acting is fairly rote as far as these things go. The only truly awful performance comes courtesy of Stephen Lang as the juiced-up, maniacally evil Colonel who often feels like one of those cartoon-ish clowns in an early 3D video game from the early to mid 90's that would shout at the camera with the most godawful lines ever written. And I know it's unfair to compare to a director's earlier work, but the scene where the Army knocks down the tree the Na'vi live in pales in comparison to the terror Cameron drums up for the finale of Titanic. Even the finale, as epic and thrilling as it is (I, at one point, found myself shouting "Kill whitey!" and breathed an epic sigh of relief once the Colonel was killed), was really nothing that an above average action director could have done given Cameron's massive budget. Maybe if Avatar hadn't been billed as the Movie That Changes Movies As We Know Them, I could be a little more fair towards it. But to truly live up to that billing, I expect a little more than I was given in this film. C+