Alien Prequel News

In July, 2009, Twentieth Century Fox made the announcement that they were planning a prequel installment for their Alien film franchise, and that the responsibility of directing the new film would fall to none other than Ridley Scott himself, the man behind the original 1979 movie.

Link: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118006722.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

The project, however, seems to be finally gaining momentum, and last month Ridley spoke exclusively to MTV regarding its status, confirming that there will be no Ripley and that, although he is keen to reinvent the imagery of the alien, he may yet turn to H. R. Giger, the concept designer for the original film, for advice.

Link: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1637638/20100422/story.jhtml

Only days later at a press junket for his new film Robin Hood, the director spilled the beans on his plans not only to shoot the prequel alien film in 3D, but to split the story into two films, not just one.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/apr/27/ridley-scott-alien-prequels-3d

This will be a first for Ridley Scott in a number of ways - he has never directed a subsequent film in a franchise before (prequel or sequel) and he has never directed a story in multiple parts before.

Soft Review

Recently, I watched a short movie as part of my journalism studies - a class that focused on reviwing that week, interestingly enough. Unfortunately I couldn't just hand in one of my previous pieces of work, and so this review came about.

Soft is a short film, a medium that is surprisingly underrepresented when it comes to reviews. I haven't seen a lot of short films myself, true, but the few I have seen (such as Paths of Hate, or The Facts in the Case of Mr Hollow) tend to be finely made, with a certain visual flair to leave a lasting impression. Few such movies are over 15 minutes long, and so tend to be far more focused on grabbing the audiences attention. For many directors, a short film is their chance to garner attention and potential backing from financers for a ful length feature.

Soft is fairly typical in this respect - it is an urban drama exploring the issues of bullying and violence in youth. Some reviewers, like Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian Film Blog favourably compare it to A Clockwork Orange. The plot revolves around a father, his son, and the gang of teenagers who harass them. The course of events is almost entirely predictable, starting off with the son being assaulted and fleeing home, before the gang intimidates the father and then besieges the pair of them in their house. That's about it really - it's readily available on Youtube so feel free to check it out for yourselves.

There is a nice variety when it comes to techniques in this movie - camera phone footage is used in key sections, particularily when the gang is dealing out violence, whilst the rest of the film is presented in a typical fashion. To put it simply, there is nothing new or groundbreaking in this film, but it is a well crafted story told in a minimalistic way, and does a LOT with very little.

Made by Simon Ellis, this short movie has won the International Short Filmmaking Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2008. Like many short movies, it's readily available on the internet, so do check it out.