Movie Aliens — How Do the Creatures in “Arrival” Compare?

Posted on November 14, 2016 at 11:18 pm

If you like movies about aliens, be sure to read Stephanie Merry’s great look at 40 years of movie extraterrestrials in the Washington Post.

The aliens in “Arrival” are spectacular, and that’s no small feat. In most “first contact” movies, the otherworldly creatures almost always let us down. Either they’re predictable — you know, little green men speaking an echoey, indecipherable language or stereotypical “Greys” with the big eyes and the egghead — or they look fake.

Carlos Huante tested many iterations with director Denis Villeneuve before they settled on the final design for “Arrival”… He settled on characters that tap into conflicting emotions: They’re serene yet daunting and huge yet indistinct. They’re heptapods, meaning they have seven legs, and they look like a cross between a giant hand and a squid; their “fingers” resemble starfish that emit an inky, smoky substance, which is how they express their entirely visual language.

They are strange but graceful. Other movie aliens have ranged from the humanoid to the insect-like, from the endearing (“E.T.,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) to the creepy and strange (“Mars Attacks”) to the all-out terrifying (“Alien,” “War of the Worlds,” “Pacific Rim”). Merry’s article gives credit to the talented and imaginative designers who created aliens that were enticingly strange and yet believable.

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Ann Hornaday on Watching Ultra-Violence

Posted on December 28, 2015 at 3:58 pm

Washington Post critic Ann Hornaday has a thoughtful piece about the violence in two end-of-the-year western-style frontier stories, “The Revenant,” from the director of last year’s Best Picture “Birdman,” Alejandro González Iñárritu and Quentin Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight.”

Both “The Hateful Eight” and “The Revenant,” which arrive in theaters over the next two weeks, make promiscuous use of bodies in pain. Directed by Quentin Tarantino and Alejandro González Iñárritu, respectively, both films are set against the pitiless, snowy backdrop of the 19th-century American West. And both traffic in lingering wide-screen images of savage brutality and mortification, as their protagonists claw, fight, shoot and stab their way to preserving their lives… oth films are set against the pitiless, snowy backdrop of the 19th-century American West. And both traffic in lingering wide-screen images of savage brutality and mortification, as their protagonists claw, fight, shoot and stab their way to preserving their lives.

These are both films with some artistic aspirations. But Hornaday questions whether the ultra-violence in both is in aid of or a distraction from their stories and their messages.

It’s possible to appreciate both films, even admire them, for their sheer ambition and near-flawless execution. But the virtuosity on display also produces its share of deep misgivings. Whether by way of Tarantino’s ironic distance or Iñárritu’s artily masochistic extremes, it’s genuine empathy and self-reflection that get short-circuited, swamped by surface values of aesthetics, technical achievement and shocking, vicarious jolts.

She compares the films to others released this year that engaged with serious, real-life atrocities like “Son of Saul,” “Room,” and “Spotlight” without making them as confrontational, explicit, even cartoonish. These films, she says, “call on each viewer’s memory, conscience and moral imagination to complete the picture and create its deepest meaning.” Individual responses to violence on film vary widely. For me, the question is: does it make you feel more or feel less?

My Letter to the Washington Post About Empire’s Costume Designers — And My Appearance on Motley Fool Money About Movies and the Oscars

Posted on February 14, 2015 at 12:00 pm

I’m delighted that the Washington Post printed my letter about the costumes in the terrific Fox series “Empire.” Robin Givhan’s article about the way the show’s costumes define the characters was outstanding, but it omitted one important detail:

I was delighted to read Robin Givhan’s insightful comments on the brilliant use of costume to illuminate character and context in the TV show “Empire” . But I’m sorry that she left out the names of the brilliant costume designers who selected those iconic looks.

Every choice, from Hakeem Lyon’s gold chain to Lucious Lyon’s pocket square to Cookie Lyon’s leopard-print, skin-tight minidress, was made by Rita McGhee and Paolo Nieddu. Costume designers play an essential role in defining characters and telling the story. When their work is recognized, their names should be included.

And thanks, as always, to the Mac Greer and Motley Fool Money for inviting me on their terrific podcast. We even managed to make some Oscar predictions.

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2013 Post Peeps Competition

Posted on March 29, 2013 at 7:53 am

I love the Post Peeps Competition! Every Easter, the Washington Post invites people to submit dioramas populated with the irresistible pink, yellow, and blue confections. Many relate to the news (this year’s entries included Peep tributes to Zero Dark Thirty and the winner paid tribute to the end of the Twinkie) or to local icons (DC’s beloved Ben’s Chili Bowl, a favorite of the President, is featured in one entry).

My favorite was inspired by Georges Seurat’s iconic painting (you may remember it from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”).

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VOD: Bringing More Choices Home

Posted on August 19, 2012 at 3:58 pm

Washington Post movie critic Ann Hornaday has a very good piece in today’s paper about video on demand. Like Ann, I would much rather see a movie in a theater. The experience of taking the actual journey to a special place away from the phone and other distractions of home and sharing those moments in the dark with others who are there at the same moment for the same purpose cannot be replicated by watching in your house while you do laundry and sort the mail. But like Hornaday, I love the availability of small movies by VOD that would not otherwise reach local theaters. As Morgan Spurlock told me when we spoke about his Comic-Con documentary:

With “Pom Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” we had so much press leading up to that film, and the week before the movie opened I was on Conan, Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, all within ten days and then the movie opened on 18 screens. So the majority of the people in the United States couldn’t even see the movie. I’m a film-maker, and I have yet to have a movie show in my own home town in West Virginia where I grew up. There’s got to be a better way—especially when it comes to documentaries.

If you’re not making a big, giant, huge mainstream Hunger-Games-esque film that’s going out on 3000 screens, how do you start to compete with those movies? For me, the best way to compete is by collapsing the window, giving anyone across the country who wants to see this film access to it immediately. You know, there’s a great line in ‘The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” “In today’s world, in today’s media landscape, there is a cultural decay rate of ideas that is about two weeks.” So you basically have two weeks to capitalize on whatever surge you have around your moment, your film, your music, whatever it is, get people to get excited about it, to see it, to consume it, to share it—because really soon, something else will jump in there—there’ll be another movie, there’ll be something else that’s the conversation driver. So, for me this weekend, I just wanted to make sure that anyone who wanted to see this film could see it.

And as Hornaday puts it:

here low-budget independent films huddle for warmth against encroaching extinction, the simultaneous release of films in theaters and on VOD — rather than the traditional months-long window between the two — has proved to be a sustaining, even crucial survival strategy.

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