Tag Archive for 'V'

The Dandy Six: Best Alien Encounter Movies

Published by Andy on November 6, 2009 in The Dandy Six. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

communionThere’s a Monster Outside my Room. Can I Have a Glass of Water? (Andy)

Signs (2002): Before M. Night Shyamalan started pushing out cinematic turds and prior to Mel Gibson going anti-Semitic and Joaquin Phoenix growing a Grizzly Adams beard and becoming a rapper, the trio made a film that is equal parts spiritual, scary and sci-fi. And best of all, Shyamalan, until the absurd ending, did it all with subtle terrors and bubbling tension. I don’t think aliens are scary, but the way Signs is told, you really start to believe this could happen. It’s an alien invasion story told from the vantage point of one small family.

Klaatu Barada Nikto (Dan)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951): Forget the Keanu Reeves eco-gospel revamp that bored you into submission last year, the original was an allegorical tale that remains poignant, maybe even more so, today. When a UFO lands at President’s Park in Washington D.C., the world fears the worst and when a spaceman appears, he’s shot and put under arrest. Naturally, the dude only wanted to tell earth that our violent tendencies have other space-faring worlds so worried they’ll kill us all if we keep it up. Focused more on socio-political ideas and the nature of humanity than special effects and action, The Day the Earth Stood Still is an aliens-visit-earth movie that, 58 years later, still carries a message we can all stand to hear.

Continue reading ‘The Dandy Six: Best Alien Encounter Movies’

Not a Movie, but Awesome Anyway

Published by Dan on May 21, 2009 in Coming Soon. 7 Comments Tags: , .

If you have any memory of the 80’s, you’ll remember NBC’s lizards-disguised-as-humans-have-come-to-enslave-the-planet TV mini-series: V. A high-production sci-fi adventure allegory min-series that spawned Independence Day’s massive spaceship hovering over cities imagery, V had most boys forgetting about Star Wars for a while and peeling silly putty off their faces, making “Wsssshhh-Zew” laser sounds and not even thinking twice about abberant behavior with a hot lizard.

V remains surprisingly solid on revisit some 26 years later, but has always been a great candidate for updating. Apparently, the ABC network agreed wholeheartedly and has rebooted V with an upcoming series this fall. The trailer below has me all kinds of pleasantly surprised and really looking forward to it. V 2009 looks to be taking modern themes (the old V was an allegory for Nazis and victory in WW II) like religion and blind devotion, change and hope and putting some pretty interesting twists on them. Still, it looks like they’re leaving losts of room open for tearing off skin to reveal lizards underneath– and that’s always awesome.