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esqueletosgays · 1 month

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ALIEN (1979)

Director: Ridley Scott Cinematography: Derek Vanlint

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farminglesbian · 5 months

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Alien (1979) Ridley Scott

#sexy to me #alien #ridley scott #derek vanlint #dop #sci fi

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bigspoopygurl · 1 year

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Alien (1979)

“Micro changes in air density, my ass.”

Director: Ridley Scott

Cinematographer: Derek Vanlint

#Alien #Ridley Scott #Derek Vanlint #telelizion

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destinationout · 1 year

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"I can't lie to you about your chances, but you have my sympathies."

Alien (1979) Directed by Ridley Scott Cinematography by Derek Vanlint

#alien #film stills #xenomorph #ridley scott #derek vanlint #sigourney weaver #ian holm #tom skerritt #john hurt #veronica cartwright #yaphet kotto #harry dean stanton

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cellarspider · 2 months

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8/?? Seek and Destroy

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We return to the movie that I wish to spin in a centrifuge until it separates into layers of its constituent parts, Prometheus.

Content warning for desecration of a dead body, continuing bumblefuck destruction of alien artifacts, and David being the adversarial two year old that he literally is.

Before we begin: Have you turned off Tumblr’s latest “feature”, which opens your account up to AI data harvesting? If not: do it! Log in from a web browser (the app doesn’t have this checkbox yet), go to “Blog Settings”, scroll down to “Visibility”, and turn on “Prevent third-party sharing for [BLOG NAME]”. Do this for each blog you have. Do it. Do it now. Tell your friends, it’s the hot new thing. Run free into the wilderness. This message will repeat whenever I feel like it.

Anyway, on with the show.

David is the most prepared crew member. While nobody else seems to have a single clue between their ears and most of the crew wasn’t even briefed prior to setting out, David has been studying for the past two years, treating language as a puzzle. He’s going to take what he learned and apply it to anything he finds in the alien complex.

And he will apply it whenever the mood takes him, because he is, again, two years old. That was the sense I got in the theater–he finds things he can mess with, and does so without hesitation or consultation with the humans. And while my instincts were still screaming that they shouldn’t even have landed yet, his behavior was the only one that made sense. He has been taught that he is only wanted when he’s useful. He has not been taught to keep his hands to himself. He figures the place out faster than the humans, and he seems pleased with himself for doing so. Therefore, he’s going to do so as much as possible.

As a result, we watch the cast act like screeching gibbons over a hologram. David had begun prodding at marks on the wall that look suspiciously like cuneiform (I’ll rant about it later), and he turned on a hologram projector. Simian crew noises ensue.

Those in the audience who are in the know are also expected to begin screeching excitedly at this point. The hallways they’re in are already taking on H. R. Giger’s signature biomechanical style. These holograms are showing us eight foot tall beings similar to his Space Jockey design.

The Space Jockey, named as such by the Alien production team, was one of those mysterious things about the original movie. Fused to what might have been the helm of the ship, seemingly alone with a hold full of carefully-arranged xenomorph eggs, and long-dead from a chestburster that had infected it. It set a warning signal before its death, misinterpreted by the crew of the Nostromo.

The movie never explained what the Space Jockey had been doing. Was this a cargo ship? A weapon? Was xenomorph reproduction somehow linked to the Space Jockey lifestyle? Their religion? Absolutely no information was given, and thus depictions of the Space Jockeys in subsequent media were split on whether they were benevolent, malevolent, entirely indifferent toward others, or simply too alien to be understood.

Physically, it was a complicated design for Alien’s crew to pull off, even as a corpse. The studio didn’t want to budget for it, and Giger ended up putting in a lot of extra work to help finish the statue. To make it seem even bigger than it was, the children of Ridley Scott and cinematographer Derek Vanlint were put into miniature space suits to give a sense of titanic scale to the creature, three times their height.

Scott made the logistical decision in Prometheus to scale these beings down significantly, purely for the difficulty in setting up shots and creating more sets scaled to this thing. It’s understandable, but I know some people are disappointed by it. As are others by the obvious implication you first get in this scene: the Space Jockey’s truly bizarre appearance is simply some sort of suit, worn by the far more humanoid aliens already seen in Prometheus’ opening.

Normally, I might be among those disappointed by that. I love monsters dearly, if my blog doesn’t give that away already. But there is a minimum threshold for inhuman features that the Engineers still meet for me. Something about the eyes and the uncanny look of their skin, both of which were deliberate choices by Ridley Scott and Neal Scanlan, the film’s creature designer who started with the Henson Company on movies like The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and has worked on the new Star Warses, including the absolutely fantastic Andor. Even in behind-the-scenes shots, they manage to look just odd enough to be pleasing to me.

(https://www.deviantart.com/pretty--kittie/art/Prometheus-Engineer-407324586)

I respect the design work that went into it and I like the final result, though I am very sympathetic to those who felt that this was an unnecessary explanation for a creature that was a more powerful symbol when it had no explanation.

Talking about such things is my happy place, and unfortunately we have to go back to The Bad Place now. The characters.

They find an alien corpse decapitated by a door (the great goddess O’Sha is most displeased), and within two minutes they’re sticking a meat thermometer in it.

Fifield the geologist has a panic attack, which is pretty relatable.

“Look, I'm just a geologist. I like rocks. I love! rocks!

Now it's clear you two don't give a shit about rocks.”

He’s right and he should say it. They should still be orbiting the planet looking for artificial structures, and Fifield should be having fun doing an aeromagnetic survey or something.

But no. Meat thermometer. Sorry, “carbon reader”. Says the body’s been dead about two thousand years. They have just punched a hole in the first alien body they’ve ever found, to get precisely one data point. This is what is called a “destructive analysis.”

Destructive analysis is a technical term, so let me define it: You know how a team just read the text inside of a charcoalized lump that used to be a Roman scroll? How they didn’t destroy anything in the scroll to do that? How we might be on a path to getting so many ancient texts it could radically reshape our understanding of the period, and all it will take is some fancy x-ray scans and computers? The opposite of that. Think the opposite of that.

I’m going to go on a tangent out of pure spite and desire to educate. Carbon dating is complicated. There’s two isotopes (types) of carbon: Carbon 14 and carbon 12. C-14 is very, veeeery slightly radioactive, which means it will eventually burp out a little subatomic particle and turn into the non-radioactive Nitrogen 14. C-14 is mostly created in our atmosphere, so once something’s dead and in the ground, it’s not gaining any more C-14, it’s slowly turning into N-14.

We know how long C-14 takes to turn into N-14, it’s about 50,000 years to lose all but 0.2% of the original C-14. If you know how much C-14 something should start with, then you can take a look at how much C-14 your sample actually has, and you can calculate how long it’s been dead. Here’s a quick explainer from Scientific American to visually summarize this.

youtube

Now, the more complicated part. You have to know the starting conditions if you want to be accurate. You have to calibrate everything, because the amount of C-14 available in an environment can change over time. We have ways of doing this, but it usually means carefully studying the environment and other clues.

So if you were to actually find carbon-based alien corpses on an alien planet, you’d need to identify the atmospheric carbon isotope ratio, and then you’d be able to make a sketchy, poorly-calibrated estimation, that could be wildly off by a large margin. A critter that did a lot of traveling in its life would be especially hard to date, as you couldn’t be sure if it’d lived where you found it for long enough to take up the local C-14 levels.

In this case, their fancy meat thermometer might be plugged directly into the script, because the number they give is only about 60 years off the actual death date. How do I know this? Because of a thing I’m not saying yet.

That’s enough for this post right now. But I’m not done with this moment. I don’t like this moment, and I need to properly explain why. Next time.

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Citations for alt-text rambles:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemiluminescence 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoluminescence 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboluminescence 4. https://dedalvs.com/ 5. https://www.reddit.com/r/conlangs/

#prometheus 2012 #prometheus (2012)#The definition for destructive analysis is squishy #and based on the subject matter #but BREATHING on this stuff is destructive so #hooboy #Youtube

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vibe-stash · 1 year

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Alien (1979) Director: Ridley Scott DOP: Derek Vanlint Production Design: Michael Seymour

#film stills #cinematography #visual storytelling #alien #ridley scott #harry dean stanton #sigourney weaver #scifi #science fiction #70s movies #70s cinema #70s film

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secondaryartifacts · 7 months

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Alien (1979). Ridley Scott

Cinematography: Derek Vanlint

Photo by: Bob Penn

#alien #film #Ridley Scott

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picsandthingsonhere · 1 year

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#sci-fi

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docrotten · 1 year

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DRAGONSLAYER (1981) – Episode 222 – Decades Of Horror 1980s

“You’ll be dead Galen Bradwarden, Sorcerer’s Apprentice. You’ll be dead, the dragon will still be alive, and I’ll still be a virgin! You’ll be dead, and I don’t care!” Sounds like a good foundation for a lasting relationship, right? Join your faithful Grue-Crew – Chad Hunt, Bill Mulligan, Crystal Cleveland, and Jeff Mohr – as they check out probably the most realistic dragon (did I hear someone say wyvern?) set to film in Dragonslayer (1981).

Decades of Horror 1980s Episode 222 – Dragonslayer (1981)

Join the Crew on the Gruesome Magazine YouTube channel! Subscribe today! And click the alert to get notified of new content! https://youtube.com/gruesomemagazine

A King has made a pact with a dragon where he sacrifices virgins to it, and the dragon leaves his kingdom alone. An old wizard, and his keen young apprentice volunteer to kill the dragon and attempt to save the next virgin in line, the King’s own daughter.

Director: Matthew Robbins

Writers: Hal Barwood, Matthew Robbins

Music by: Alex North

Cinematography by: Derek Vanlint (director of photography)

Film Editing by: Tony Lawson

Visual Effects by:

Sam Comstock (animation supervisor: ILM)

Alan Maley (matte painting supervisor: ILM)

Dennis Muren (supervisor of special visual effects: ILM)

Ken Ralston (dragon supervisor: ILM)

Thomas G. Smith (effects production supervisor: ILM) (as Thomas Smith)

Phil Tippett (dragon supervisor: ILM)

Gene Whiteman (equipment engineering supervisor: ILM)

Selected Cast:

Peter MacNicol as Galen Bradwarden

Caitlin Clarke as Valerian

Ralph Richardson as Ulrich of Cragganmore

John Hallam as Tyrian

Peter Eyre as King Casiodorus Ulfilas

Albert Salmi as Greil (dubbed by Norman Rodway)

Sydney Bromley as Hodge

Chloe Salaman as Princess Elspeth Ulfilas

Emrys James as Simon (Valerian’s Father)

Roger Kemp as Horsrick, Casiodorus’s Chamberlain

Ian McDiarmid as Brother Jacopus

Dragonslayer is Bill’s pick. Surprise! He had read about the technique called go-motion and really enjoys it, calling Vermathrax Pejorative one of the greatest dragons ever put on film. It is also one of his favorite kinds of fantasy movies; one where the world is messy and dirty, and a noble character does not get rescued despite audience expectations.

Crystal labels Dragonslayer as one of her all-time favorite movies. It would not be nearly so memorable for her without the special effects and the dragon. She also points out that technically, it is a wyvern, not a dragon. Not a big fan of pure fantasy movies, Jeff loves seeing Dragonslayer for the first time, especially the work from professionals like Phil Tippett & Dennis Muren. The Grue-Crew is universally impressed with Caitlin Clarke’s performance as Valerian and wishes that she was given much more work as a female lead.

If you’re in the mood for a great fire-breathing wyvern, née dragon, you can’t do better than Dragonslayer. At the time of this writing, it is available to stream from Kanopy, Prime, and Paramount+. As far as physical media, a Blu-ray version of Dragonslayer is scheduled for a 21 March 2023 release from Paramount.

Every two weeks, Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror 1980s podcast will cover another horror film from the 1980s. The next episode’s film, chosen by Crystal, will be Pet Sematary (1989), directed by Mary Lambert from the novel and screenplay by Stephen King. Sometimes, dead is better.

Please let them know how they’re doing! They want to hear from you – the coolest, grooviest fans – so leave them a message or comment on the gruesome Magazine Youtube channel, on the website, or email the Decades of Horror 1980s podcast hosts at [email protected].

Check out this episode!

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cinemgc · 3 years

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